


0^ l<^^^^^^* ^oV^ , 

















^p ^^illtam ^Tetoett Entktx, T)JD, 



MY GENERATION: An Autobiographical In- 
terpretation. Illustrated. 

THE NEW RESERVATION OF TIME. 

PERSONAL POWER. Counsels to College 
Men. 

THE MAKING AND UNMAKING OF THE 
PREACHER. Lectures on the Lyman Beecher 
Foundation, Yale University, 1898. 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
Boston and New York 



MY GENERATION 




cM^/:f'^U2/A^^ . 



MY GENERATION 

AN 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL INTERPRETATION 

BY 

WILLIAM JEWETT TUCKER 

President Emeritus of Dartmouth College 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

The Riverside Press Cambridge 
1919 






COPYRIGHT, I919, BY WILLIAM JEWETT TUCKER 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



bbl Id !9i9 



©CI.A53fil75 



'\A.v I 



TO 

ROBERT ARCHEY WOODS 

HEAD OF THE SOUTH END (aNDOVEr) HOUSE 

AND 

ERNEST MARTIN HOPKINS 

PRESIDENT OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE 



PREFACE 

There must be, of course, some reason for that backward 
errand of the mind which is implied in autobiography. 
"Confessions" may be, they frequently are, the work 
of the imagination; but, when genuine, they have their 
justification in the unburdening of a mind of its past. 
"Reminiscences" of lighter vein are the recreation of the 
mind; in more serious vein, its revaluation of men and 
events according to the appraisal of the memory. "Inter- 
pretation" represents most nearly the unfinished work of 
a lifetime. In its more personal use it offers to the individual 
worker a just relief from his frequent sense of the incom- 
pleteness and the impermanence of his work, by allowing 
him to relate it to things which have in themselves fullness 
or stability — movements, causes, institutions. Applied 
in its larger relations, it may make some unfinished work 
of a generation, through the better understanding of it, 
the special task of the next, and so maintain that con- 
tinuity of purpose among like-minded men which is the 
essential element in social progress. 

It had not been my intention to write an autobiography, 
even in the specialized form of interpretation. The result 
which now appears was not a matter of design or of pre- 
meditation. Before I became interested in the preparation 
of this book the initiative had been taken by my wife, 
through her self-imposed but most gracious task of sifting 
and arranging the very considerable amount of memoranda 
and correspondence, which had accumulated during the 
years of my professional and semi-public service. The nat- 



viii PREFACE 

ural outcome of her work, were any public use to be made 
of the material thus prepared, would have been a volume 
of correspondence edited by her, with her own annotations. 
Such an outcome, though presumably quite in the future, 
I had anticipated in the event of publication. But as the 
sifting process went on, it became evident to both of us 
that the publication of correspondence, however it might 
be annotated, would be an insuflScient and perhaps mis- 
leading treatment of the data in hand; that, in fact, the 
only practicable treatment must be in the way of auto- 
biographical interpretation. In the first place, the corre- 
spondence was incomplete, as few copies of my own letters 
had been preserved, and many of the letters received, natu- 
rally the most interesting, were in their prevailing char- 
acter confidential. Furthermore, my professional career 
had been divided not only in time and place, but still more 
according to the specific objects which had been pursued, 
requiring a personal knowledge of motives and purposes 
to give it the requisite unity. And further still, the spirit 
of my whole work had been so far related, at least to my- 
self, to what I have termed the fortune of my generation, 
that it could hardly have been interpreted except by the 
one who had passed through experiences incident to the 
peculiar incentives and influences of the generation. For 
these reasons the book assumed its present more personal 
form, but the making of it was none the less a work of 
collaboration. 

Enough only of the personal has been introduced into 
this "Interpretation" to serve as a background for the 
professional point of view. I am well aware that any inter- 
pretation of one's generation to be of value must be gen- 
uinely and broadly human. But the next demand, as I 



PREFACE ix 

apprehend, is for definiteness of view, a certain recognizable 
if not authorized relation of the would-be interpreter to his 
time. Such a relation may be properly assumed to exist be- 
tween a man and his profession. As compared with the out- 
look of a mere observer, the professional view is from within 
the generation. It is more than a view; it is an experience, 
an experience of the inner life of the generation and of its 
responsible activities. Among the professions of my time, I 
know of none which made more vital contacts with the 
working forces of the generation, or shared more sensi- 
tively in the quickening or disturbing influences of its in- 
tellectual life than the ministry. There were at least three 
specific objects of very great interest and concern to the 
ministry, in so far as it was affected by the progressive 
spirit of the new era — the advancement of theology, the 
development of the social conscience into an agency ade- 
quate for social progress, and the expansion of the higher 
education to admit the subject-matter and discipline of 
the new knowledge. This last object, especially as it came 
within the range of the ministry through the New England 
traditions, involved the reconstruction of the institutional 
life of the colleges quite as much as the readjustment of 
the curriculum. 

During the period of my two pastorates (1867-80) it can 
hardly be said that these objects had taken definite shape. 
I was more conscious of a general enlargement of the scoj>e 
of the ministry — at Manchester, of the widening outlook 
toward industrialism; in New York, of a growing sensitive- 
ness to the human needs of the city. There was, however, 
the increasing consciousness that the prevailing imrest 
was seeking definition as the first step toward satisfaction. 
And it was with the purpose of entering into a clearer 



PREFACE 



1 



understanding of the new responsibilities of the ministry, 
and of taking some more directive part in the training of 
men for its new duties that I made the change from the 
work of the pastorate to that of the schools. 

The two periods wliich follow that of the pastorate, 
which I have designated the Andover period (1880-93) 
and the Dartmouth period (1893-1909) were outwardly 
unlike — one was theological, the other was educational; 
one was controversial, the other altogether constructive. 
But the same influences from without and the same spirit 
within were at work in each. In the circumstances of the 
time, theological advancement, including the new socio- 
logical development, and educational reconstruction were 
not far apart in aim or method. I have not, however, used 
these general terms to designate the two periods, because 
I have wished to emphasize in each case the institutional 
element. The so-called Andover Controversy was singu- 
larly out of place — it belonged anywhere rather than at 
Andover — but because of its variance with all the tradi- 
tions of the Seminary it doubtless "fell out" to the further- 
ance of theological freedom and progress in a way impossi- 
ble in an unprogressive school. The part which Dartmouth 
took in educational reconstruction was similar to that 
taken by other colleges of its grade, but there was that 
about the process as carried out which gave it an institu- 
tional result quite distinctive and unique. As a college 
administrator, my work included a specific task under- 
taken for an institution which had summoned its loyal 
alumni to meet in its behalf a belated and restive oppor- 
tunity. 

The closing period to which I have referred under the 
title, "The New Reservation of Time," represents, ia the 



PREFACE xi 

changed conditions of modern life, a new but most valu- 
able perquisite of age. It has been to me, in its extent at 
least, an unexpected gift, reaching now to a decade, and 
enhanced in value beyond all estimate by the events 
which have crowded the later years. To have lived in such 
a period, to have shared in its grave anxieties and mighty 
hopes, to have been able to study into the causes wliich 
were producing such momentous sacrifices and struggles, 
and to have been allowed to witness the final consumma- 
tion, all this has made the period of retirement more 
significant, even within the sphere of personal expression, 
than any preceding period of responsible activity. It has 
not been, I trust, inconsistent either with previous activi- 
ties, or with the natural restraints consequent upon oflScial 
retirement, that I have ventured from time to time, under 
the stimulus of passing events, into the open field of the 
publicist. 

I am indebted for the title of this book, as well as for 
many other helpful suggestions, to Mr. Homer E. Keyes, 
Business Director of Dartmouth. His advice and aid in re- 
gard to illustrations have been of peculiar value. The map 
of Dartmouth College was especially prepared by Mr. 
Harry G. Wells, Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds. 

Professor Frank H. Dixon very kindly assumed the 
reading of the proof. This meant much more than the cor- 
rection of errors in print (these are slight in the galleys of 
The Riverside Press) . It meant in the present instance the 
verification of quotations and dates, and not infrequently 
the revision of paragraphs, in order to avoid those repeti- 
tions and inconsistencies which were liable in a book dic- 
tated at intervals as strength permitted. 



xii PREFACE 

I desire to express my appreciation of the continued 
hospitality of Houghton Mifflin Company, a hospitahty 
which, in one form or another, I have enjoyed for more 
than thirty years. 

William Jewett Tucker 

July, 1919 



CONTENTS 

I. The Fortune of my Generation 1 

An Introductory Retrospect 1 

II. The Personal Background 19 

Ancestry and Early Home 20 

School and College 30 

III. The Environment of the Civil War . . . .41 

IV. The Profession of the Ministry 51 

V. Two Pastorates 63 

The Franklin Street (Congregational) Church, Man- 
chester, New Hampshire, 1867-1875 .... 64 

The Madison Square (Presbyterian) Church, New York 
City, 1875-1880 71 

VI. The Progressive Movement in Theology . . 90 

VII. The Andover Period : Andover as a Storm Center 

and as a Working Center, 1880-1893 . . .100 

I. The Opening Phase of the Andover Controversy 101 

II. The Andover Movement and the Religious Public 125 

III. Andover as a Working Center during the Decade 

of Conflict 159 

IV. The Andover Trial and its Result . . . .185 

VIII. Andover and Dartmouth, 1892 .222 

IX. The Dartmouth Period: Modernizing an His- 
toric College, 1893-1909 248 

I. "The Corporate Consciousness of the College" . 249 



xiv CONTENTS 

II. The Traditions of Dartmouth 271 

III. Reconstruction and Expansion 296 

IV. The New Morale 323 

V. An Advanced PoUcy toward Non-Professional 

Graduates 349 

VI. Professional and Public Relations during the 

Presidency 362 

VII. Two Years of Crippled Leadership .... 394 

X. " The New Reservation OF Time " 414 

A Partial Resumption of Literary and Semi-Public Work 414 

Index 453 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

William Jewett Tucker . . . Photogravure frontispiece 
The Tucker Homestead at Griswold, Connecticut . 20 

Dartmouth College, 1857-61 36 

Professors in Andover Seminary in the Early Sixties 56 

Calvin E. Stowe, Austin Phelps, Edwards A. Park 

Madison Square Church in the Seventies ... 74 

The Defendants in the Andover Trial .... 188 
George Harris, William J. Tucker, Egbert C. Smyth, Edward Y. Hincks, 
John W. Churchill 

The Tucker Home at Andover 230 

The Seminary Grounds opposite the House . . . 230 

Tomb of Eleazar Wheelock, Hanover .... 272 

The Laying of the Corner Stone of the New Dart- 
mouth Hall 276 

Map of Dartmouth College Grounds 310 

College Hall (College Club and Commons) . . .314 

Edward Tuck 318 

Webster Hall 322 

Rollins Chapel Interior after the First Enlargement 344 

President Tucker, 1899 364 

The Home on Occom Ridge overlooking the River . 416 

The Connecticut River at Hanover 432 

In Retirement 448 



MY GENERATION 

CHAPTER I 

THE FORTUNE OF MY GENERATION 

An Introductory Retrospect 

The generation which was beginning to take shape and 
character when I came of age, was to have the pecuHar 
fortune, whether to its disadvantage or to its distinction, 
of finding its own way into what we now call the "modern 
world." If I were to characterize the generation as I look 
back upon its course, I should say that it was by this neces- 
sity a self-educated generation. The great gift of educa- 
tional value which came to it from the past, through the 
faithful transmission of the previous generation, was disci- 
pline, the intellectual and moral discipline of the old re- 
gime. The actual process of self -education began with its 
conscious entrance into the world of the new knowledge 
and of the new values, constantly opening before it. This 
process was progressive rather than cumulative. Men no 
longer estimated one another by the relative amount of 
their knowledge, but rather by their relative power of in- 
tellectual initiative, by their ability to enter the new fields 
of inquiry and research, and to occupy advanced positions. 
I have referred to this peculiar condition or circumstance 
in which the lot of my generation was cast, as its fortune. 
It came, that is, in the order of time, and not, with a 
single exception, by the compulsion of some great inher- 
itance, or by the setting apart to some specific duty. 
The stimulus, the incentive, the challenge was altogether 



2 MY GENERATION 

in the situation itself. Men found themselves singularly 
stirred to think new thoughts and to attempt new methods 
of action. There was no manifest unity of purpose in the 
spirit of the age, but all movements, though often conflict- 
ing, were seen to make for progress. Gradually the desire 
and struggle for progress became the unifying purpose of 
the generation. The self-education of which I have spoken 
developed more and more in all departments of life into a 
passion for progress. 

The peculiar fortune of the generation becomes evi- 
dent and clear as we give due account to its place in 
the order of time. It explains what was by far the most 
significant fact in its fortune, namely, its intellectual de- 
tachment in so large degree from the past. It is not difficult 
to place the cause, or to fix the date of the break between 
the old order of thought and the new, provided we make 
due allowance for the intervening period between the time 
when the break took place, and the time when it took effect. 
By common consent, the break came with the publication 
of the "Origin of Species." This was in the fall of 1859. The 
significance, however, of the publication of the "Notes," 
as Mr. Darwin modestly called the treatise, was not readily 
apprehended, doubtless in part because of the unassuming 
way in which it was put forth. The most that Mr. Darwin 
then claimed is summed up in the following words, of which 
the last sentence only is now really prophetic: "When the 
views entertained in this volume on the origin of species, 
or when analogous views are generally admitted, we can 
dimly foresee that there will be a considerable revolution in 
natural history. ... In the distant future I see open fields 
for far more important researches. Psychology will be 
based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquire- > 



THE FORTUNE OF MY GENERATION 3 

ment of each natural power and capacity by gradation. 
Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his his- 
tory." It was not till 1871 that Darwin published "The 
Descent of Man," embodying his conclusions regarding 
the derivation of man's nature from lower and still lower 
forms of animal life. 

An interesting reminiscence, showing the rather casual 
manner in which the earlier volume came to the notice of 
persons of culture in this country, has been given by the 
late Rev. Dr. Charles C. Caverno, of Lombard, Illinois. 
Dr. Caverno was at the time of the incident a young 
lawyer in Milwaukee, and was acting as chairman of a 
committee on the Public Library of the city. "Sometime 
in the winter of 1859-60," he says, "Ralph Waldo Emer- 
son, who was then giving a course of lectures in Milwau- 
kee, asked me if I could procure him a copy of a book on 
Species, which an Englishman had published lately, and 
he added, ' from what I have heard it is likely to make the 
dry bones rattle.' I have given," Dr. Caverno adds, "Mr. 
Emerson's description of the book he was after, for he gave 
no name of author or definite title of book." 

However casual may have been the introduction of "The 
Origin of Species" among general readers of non-scientific 
habits, it was not long before it began to change the intel- 
lectual atmosphere. It gradually changed the point of view. 
Men began to see things differently. The intellectual de- 
tachment from the past was brought about chiefly through 
this change in the point of view, — a change set forth with 
great clearness by Mr. Balfour in his analytic retrospect 
of the nineteenth century. "No century," he says, "has 
seen so great a change in our intellectual apprehension of 
the world in which we live. It is not merely that this cen- 



4 MY GENERATION 

tury has witnessed a prodigious and unexampled growth in 
our stock of knowledge, — for new knowledge might ac- 
cumulate without end, and yet do nothing more than fill 
in, without materially changing the outline already traced 
by the old. Something much more important than this has 
happened. Our whole point of view has altered. The mental 
framework in which we arrange the separate facts in the 
world of men and of things is quite a new framework. The 
spectacle of the universe presents itself now in a wholly 
changed perspective. We do not see more, but we see 
differently." 

Doubtless the intellectual detachment from the past 
was effected with less violence through changing the point 
of view, than would have been possible through any other 
method. And yet the result was not gained without oppo- 
sition, and in some quarters sharp antagonisms. The scien- 
tific renaissance, if such we choose to term it, was not like 
the revival of letters in the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- 
turies, making itself felt through the diffusion of light and 
culture, and creating a more spiritual environment. In re- 
ality, it was not so much a renaissance as a revolution. It 
became articulate as a challenge, calling in question the 
established order of thought, and summoning men to new 
ways of thinking. The controversial aspect of the scientific 
renaissance or revolution became manifest more quickly 
and more seriously in Great Britain than in this country. 
This was due, I think, in no small measure to the presence 
of such pugnacious advocates of the new theories as Huxley 
and Tyndall, who found a welcome opportunity for con- 
troversy in the conservatism and conventionalism of the 
English Church. So sensitive were the religious interests 
which the controversy touched, that men quite remote 



THE FORTUNE OF MY GENERATION 5 

from ecclesiastical or theological connections were drawn 
into it. As early as 1864 Disraeli, in a speech before a di- 
oscesan conference at Oxford, uttered his famous mot — 
"The question before us is this. Is man an ape or an angel? 
I, my lord, I am on the side of the angels." Within the next 
decade, Oxford was aflame with the controversial spirit 
which had spread in all directions. "Darwinism," says 
Mrs. Humphry Ward in her recent "Recollections," "was 
penetrating everywhere; Pusey was preaching against its 
effects on belief; Balliol stood for an unfettered history 
and criticism, Christ Church for authority and creeds; 
Renan's 'Origines' were still coming out, Strauss's last 
book also; my uncle [Matthew Arnold] was publishing 
'God and the Bible' in succession to 'Literature and 
Dogma'; and 'Supernatural Religion' was making no 
small stir." 

That the controversy was carried on with less bitterness 
in this country was due in part, of course, to the preoccu- 
pation of mind with the affairs of the nation (1860-70), but 
still in part to the different religious or ecclesiastical condi- 
tions which obtained here. The difference in tone may also 
be attributed to the marked contrast in the temper of our 
leading scientists of the period — Agassiz, Gray, and 
Dana. There was a good deal of attempted sarcasm of the 
Disraeli order, which found expression in the pulpit, but 
the higher religious journals and reviews spoke with be- 
coming restraint. Especially noticeable in this regard was 
a series of articles in the "Bibliotheca Sacra," the leading 
theological review of the time, by Professor George Fred- 
erick Wright of Oberlin, then the young pastor of the Free 
Church in Andover, Massachusetts. These papers were 
characterized by a breadth and candor, and above all by 



6 MY GENERATION 

a thorough comprehension of the real questions at issue, 
which make them still an example of fair-minded and in- 
telligent discussion in place of controversy. 

The secondary stages of the scientific controversy in this 
country were more marked than the earlier stages in their 
effect upon religion. The various phases of Biblical Criti- 
cism, which followed as a natural sequence from the appli- 
cation of the new scientific standards to the Bible, awak- 
ened more concern, and stirred more bitterness, than the 
new hypothesis regarding the origin of man. And the after 
effect of the controversy upon the popular as well as upon 
the critical mind was for the time disturbing to religious 
faith. The wave of agnosticism which spread over the 
country necessitated various changes in the presentation 
of religious truth. A larger place was given in the teaching 
of the seminaries to the department of Apologetics; more 
emphasis was placed by the pulpit upon conduct and duty; 
and gradually there was an appropriation of the new 
truths disclosed by science in the interest of ethics and of 
faith. As a general result, I think that it may now be said 
that the loss to religion of certain dogmatic but divisive 
beliefs found in due time its compensation, in the insistence 
placed upon the function of conscience in the interpreta- 
tion, as well as in the enforcement of religion. 

I have referred at some length to the religious contro- 
versy attending the scientific revolution, because it pro- 
duced at first a greater effect as a disturbing force in reli- 
gion than as a constructive force in education. Of this lat- 
ter effect I shall have much to say in detail hereafter. The 
educational effect when it came was twofold : it brought in 
a vast amount of new subject-matter, and it changed alto- 
gether the method of the higher education. Of these two 



THE FORTUNE OF MY GENERATION 7 

effects, the latter was by far the more revolutionary. In 
fact, the scientific method maybe said to have created some 
subjects in the curriculum of the colleges, to have recre- 
ated others, and to have changed the relative position of 
certain other subjects, as in the case of the ancient and 
modern languages. Within the range of college and univer- 
sity teaching, the greatest contribution of the scientific 
method was the graduate school. Various attempts of a 
partial nature had been made to anticipate this object, but 
the opening of Johns Hopkins in 1876 inaugurated the 
epoch of graduate instruction. Beyond this contribution 
was the establishment of the research foundation, separat- 
ing investigation from teaching, in which Johns Hopkins 
led the way in the advanced study of medicine. 

I have emphasized the fact that, with a single exception, 
the fortune of my generation was not predetermined by its 
inheritance. That exception however, though local, was of 
the highest consequence. Before it passed off the stage, 
the preceding generation in this country had reached the 
climax of its moral power in the struggle for the abolition 
of slavery. A part of its unfinished task went over to my 
generation. The whole spirit of the struggle went over as a 
moral heritage, — the bequest of the Puritan conscience at 
the stage of its greatest activity. The bequest took prece- 
dence of the new gifts which marked the intellectual 
abundance of the modern age. It was not something to be 
accepted or denied : it was to be taken at its full value and 
put to immediate use. Due consideration must be given to 
this relation of the generation to its moral heritage, as the 
explanation in part of the slow awakening of intellectual 
life in this country to the scientific renaissance. To go back 
no farther than the opening decade of the last half of the 



8 MY GENERATION 



1 



century, we find that the generation then in responsible 
relation to the country was charged with the moral passion 
of the struggle leading up to and culminating in the Civil 
War. Compared with the very complex issues which 
marked the close of the century, social, economic, and 
political, the issues of that time were simple, almost ele- 
mental. There were but two vital questions before the 
people, the preservation of the Unions and the elimination 
of slavery, and gradually these became one and the same 
question. The Seventh of March Speech by Mr. Webster 
(1850) was the last serious but pathetic effort, — pathetic 
both in its sincerity and in its futility, — to save the Union 
without first destroying slavery. Thenceforth, throughout 
the decade, the struggle was essentially "the anti-slavery 
struggle." The consequences to the nation itself were not 
sufficiently imminent to restrain or confuse the moral sen- 
timent which was aroused. It was not until the war was 
well under way that the preservation of the Union was seen 
to be the paramount, because the inclusive issue, (as was 
predicted by Mr. Webster), carrying with it as a national 
necessity the destruction of slavery. The spirit of nation- 
ality, which had dominated the mind of Mr. Webster in 
his view of the impending conflict, then reasserted itself 
in the mind of Mr. Lincoln. In his reply, August 22, 1862, 
to the open letter of Horace Greeley in the "New York 
Tribune," severely criticizing the policy of the Administra- 
tion, Mr. Lincoln made this clear and decisive statement 
of his policy: "My paramount object in this struggle is to 
save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy sla- 
very. . . What I do about slavery and the colored race, 
I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what 
I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help 



THE FORTUNE OF MY GENERATION 9 

to save the Union." And yet so inextricably was the de- 
struction of slavery bound up in the saving of the Union 
that a month after the date of the above statement, Mr. 
Lincoln issued the preliminary proclamation of emancipa- 
tion, an act to which he afterwards referred as "the cen- 
tral act of my administration." 

It was because of the fact that the Civil War, as it ad- 
vanced, became more and more on the part of the North a 
struggle for the national existence, that the anti-slavery 
feeling was stronger, certainly more demonstrative in the 
decade preceding the war than during the war. Through- 
out that decade slavery, in and of itself, was the para- 
mount issue. It vexed, with increasing intensity, the con- 
science of the North. Occasions calculated to arouse and 
inflame public sentiment followed one another in rapid 
succession, — the arrest of the fugitive slave, Anthony 
Burns, in the streets of Boston, and like incidents connected 
with the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, the fraud- 
ulent and violent attempts to impose slavery upon Kansas, 
the assault upon Charles Sumner at his desk in the Senate 
Chamber, the Dred Scott Decision, the John Brown Raid, 
the secession of South Carolina. The anti-slavery literature 
of the time, often the product of genius, compelled public 
attention. This literature was remarkable for its variety, — 
"Uncle Tom's Cabin," the editorials of Garrison and Gree- 
ley, the sermons and addresses of Beecher, the platform 
speeches of Phillips, the prophetic utterances of Whittier 
and Lowell, the debates of Seward and Sumner in the Sen- 
ate, and the campaign speeches of Lincoln in reply to 
Douglas. 

Perhaps the most effective agency for the propagation 
of the anti-slavery reform was the lecture platform, then 



10 MY GENERATION 



1 



known as the Lyceum, as it gave the reformer direct access 
to the people. Nearly all the popular lecturers of the time 
were pronounced anti-slavery men. When they discussed 
other subjects than slavery, they made their personal influ- 
ence felt for the "cause." The reply of Wendell Phillips to 
a lecture committee, when asked for his terms, embodied 
the spirit of the whole anti-slavery brotherhood, — "Let 
me take my subject and I'll come for nothing: for any 
other subject seventy-five dollars." Out of this training 
there came not only moral but intellectual results of a high 
order. The anti-slavery agitation produced its own school 
of thought and style. In many instances, the school gave 
the equivalent of a liberal education. Garrison, Greeley, 
and Whittier were not college graduates, but they were 
the intellectual peers of Phillips, Lowell, and Seward. Mr. 
Lincoln was the conspicuous product of the school. With- 
out the slightest advantage from any of the conventional 
forms of intellectual training, except his early practice in 
the local courts, he became, and remains, among the men 
of his time the acknowledged master of argument and 
style. Recalling the fact that the subject-matter of Mr. 
Lincoln's thought was chiefly concerned with slavery, it is 
interesting to note the relative proportion of his public ut- 
terances, compared with those of other men, which has 
been incorporated into literature, — the speech in Cooper 
Institute, remarkable for its simplicity, its logical power, 
and its moral grandeur; the second Inaugural, without a 
like or equal among state papers in the records of any 
nation, and the Gettysburg Speech, unmatched for its 
chastened eloquence. 

A singular intellectual and moral phenomenon is the re- 
appearance of Mr. Lincoln in connection with the issues 



THE FORTUNE OF MY GENERATION ii 

and events of the present war, through frequent reference 
to his acts, and through constant quotations from his 
messages and speeches. It is hardly possible to read any of 
the English papers for a month — notably the London 
" Spectator " — without meeting with some serious allu- 
sion to Mr. Lincoln. He appears to be more in evidence 
than any British statesman. Very much of this return to 
him is due to the similarity between the fundamental 
issues at stake in the present war, and those of the Civil 
War, but much more to Mr. Lincoln himself, and to his 
incomparable power of stating moral principles with a 
finality which holds good for all time. 

It was impossible that such a moral campaign as that of 
the anti-slavery speakers and writers could be waged for 
any length of time without producing definite and far- 
reaching results. Early in the decade (1850-60), the public 
sentiment thus created began to crystallize in local politi- 
cal organizations in several of the Northern States. In 
1856, the national Republican party was formed, pledged 
to resist the further encroachment of the slave power. Af- 
ter a single defeat in a national contest, the party effected 
the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency. When the 
war actually came, it was to many a war of atonement for 
the wrongs of slavery, a war of national repentance. And 
such it was to the end in the deep undercurrent of the na- 
tional feeling, as interpreted by Mr. Lincoln in the memo- 
rable passage from his second Inaugural, March 4, 1865: 
"Fondly do we hope — fervently do we pray — that this 
mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God 
wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bonds- 
man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall 
be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the 



12 MY GENERATION 

lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was 
said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 
'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous alto- 
gether.'" 

The revival of Puritanism, which was so evident through- 
out the anti-slavery conflict, and to a large degree through- 
out the war, was naturally followed by a certain relaxation 
of the national conscience when the war was over. The 
moral tension could not be maintained after the crisis was 
passed. There was also a distinct lowering of the intellec- 
tual tone of national politics. The period which followed 
the Civil War had little of the moral grandeur of the period 
which preceded it, and much less intellectual power. Had 
Mr. Lincoln lived, the result might have been different, — 
possibly not. Other men fell below their standards. The 
debates in Congress, which had been characterized by 
seriousness and dignity, even when most heated, were 
marked more and more by party animosities, and by per- 
sonal bitterness. The Government remained substantially 
in the hands of the men who had carried the nation through 
the war, but their statesmanship was not so evidently 
equal to the new task. Divergent policies on the part of the 
leaders resulted in much confusion, and led to many un- 
wise and arbitrary acts. Corruption also, which had not 
been altogether absent during the war, came in more openly 
in the process of reorganizing the States that had been 
in rebellion. On the whole, the political atmosphere which 
hung over the nation during the period of reconstruction 
was heavy and depressing. There were those who saw or 
affected to see in the death of Mr. Lincoln, coincident with 
the close of the war, a possible advantage to the country in 
the transfer of the executive authority to sterner hands. 



THE FORTUNE OF MY GENERATION 13 

but the immediate effect was a moral relapse. And time has 
shown that what the work of reconstruction most lacked 
was the moral genius of Mr. Lincoln. 

It may not, however, be assumed that because the na- 
tion suffered a certain moral relapse after the war, the im- 
pulse of the moral heritage became a spent force. The im- 
pulse persisted, especially in its continuous influence upon 
individual life. Men went about their work under a new 
sense of responsibility. Side by side with the work of na- 
tional reconstruction, there was the vast work of recon- 
structing the economic, social, and religious life of the 
country, which was in one way or another every man's 
business. And for this task the earlier education, with its 
more rigid moral discipline, was still eflScacious, in spite of 
its lessening intellectual authority. It remained, as I have 
intimated, a steadying force in the midst of the quickening 
but distracting influences which marked the incoming of 
the ''modern era." In referring to the abolition of slavery 
as the unfinished task of Puritanism, I do not assert that 
the accomplishment of this end completes its task. But 
later movements of the moral order have not been so dis- 
tinctively the work of Puritanism. What we have begun 
to term the social conscience is wider in its sources and 
broader in its workings than the anti-slavery conscience. 
The prohibition crusade, for example, is of the South 
more than of New England. Economic crusades have their 
origin most frequently in the West. The Puritan conscience 
may be expected to go over into the national blend of moral 
forces, with the prestige and influence attending its accom- 
plished results. 

In the further estimate of the causes which affected the 
fortune of my generation, according to its place in the or- 



14 MY GENERATION 

der of time, I put without hesitancy the incoming of the 
new social order consequent upon the rise of industrialism. 
This incoming of the new social order was in reality a 
social revolution, though lacking most of the usual signs of 
violence. For it was nothing less than the change from the 
individualistic basis of society to the collective basis, or, if 
we do not allow the political implication of the term, to the 
socialistic basis. And the change came, not in any way of 
evolution from the existing theory or state of society, but 
altogether through the compulsion of outer forces. Indi- 
vidualism, as a working theory of society, was over- 
whelmed and put to confusion by the vast output of the 
material forces, which had been set in operation by the dis- 
coveries and applications of science. True, individualism 
itself was a contributory cause in this material expansion, 
perhaps the greatest, because furnishing the necessary ini- 
tiative. But whatever may have been the relative part 
taken by the agencies already at work, the situation which 
they created forced the change. The old order could not 
bear the strain of modern industrialism. 

In view of the immense pressure of industrialism upon 
the social status, the result produced is often referred to as 
the industrial revolution. But this designation confounds 
one of the greatest of the causes of the change in the social 
order with the change itself, — the change, that is, from 
the individualistic to the socialistic conception of society. 
This revolutionary change reached far beyond the limits of 
industrialism. Still the results were most quickly and most 
extensively manifest within its limits. These were equally 
manifest in the changes wrought in each of the two great 
factors of industrialism, capital and labor. Capital rapidly 
passed from the hands of the individual into the control of 



THE FORTUNE OF MY GENERATION 15 

the corporation, and thence into the control of the trust. 
Labor passed in Hke manner and with equal step from 
the control of the individual to that of the union, and on 
to that of the federation. Capitalist and workman alike 
placed themselves under self-imposed limitations. They al- 
lowed themselves to disappear as individuals to reappear as 
members of organizations. Business in general passed from 
the stage of individual contract to that of collective bar- 
gaining. The change, though different in its workings, soon 
became as marked in trade as in the industries. The indi- 
vidual trader gave way before the combination or the syn- 
dicate. The small shop was merged into the department 
store. 

Meanwhile a corresponding change was going on in the 
attitude of men to their daily work. Work came to mean 
employment, and getting employment meant getting a 
place, or a position, according to the new grading of work. 
The effect of the change was very marked in the case of 
graduates from the colleges entering on a business career. 
The first years of effort were often years of experimentation, 
— the trying of one place after another to find, if possible, 
a fit. It was possible to make a place, as well as to find one, 
in the new and more rigid order, but it required greater 
power of initiative and invention, and especially of adapta- 
tion. 

The political effect of the change in the social order has 
thus far been much less than was thought probable, much 
less in fact than might have been expected. The advance 
on the socialistic basis has stopped far short of socialism. 
Democracy is a very elastic term. It may mean represent- 
ative government or, as nearly as possible, popular gov- 
ernment. In Mr. Lincoln's analysis of democratic govern- 



i6 MY GENERATION 

ment as "of the people, by the people, and for the people," 
it is the second distinction only that is really concerned 
with method. The social revolution placed the political 
stress at that point, but it effected little more than a series 
of experiments in popular government. No radical change 
was carried out, and few were attempted. The Government 
has gradually become more socialistic in its working, with- 
out making any appreciable approach to socialism. I have 
referred to the new idea of place or position in the daily 
work. State socialism could mean nothing less than the 
formal if not arbitrary placing of men, the assignment of 
every man to his task. In this ultimate possibility, abso- 
lutism and socialism are not far apart in principle. It is 
impossible to conceal the fact that underneath the glowing 
promises of socialism, there lies the threat of a grievous 
tyranny, if the principle should be carried to its logical con- 
clusion at the hands of an industrial democracy. In the 
momentous struggle now raging, it remains to be seen 
whether organized socialism is to be the ally of democracy 
or the tool of absolutism. 

The religious effect of the social revolution was in some 
respects deeper and more far-reaching than the political 
effect. It changed the prevailing type of religion. Individ- 
ualism had been the foundation of the Protestant faith, 
especially of Puritanism. Now men began to think in 
terms of social Christianity. "Even the Church," wrote 
Stanley Leathes in the introduction to "The Latest Age" 
in the series of Cambridge Histories, " even the Church has 
been infected; the modern priest is sometimes more con- 
cerned for the unemployed than for the unrepentant." 
This sarcasm hid a deep truth. Christianity had begun to 
concern itself with economic conditions. Poverty, if the 



THE FORTUNE OF MY GENERATION 17 

result of unemployment, called for more than charity. The 
relief lay in social justice, a term which came into service 
to express the obligation of society to the unemployed or 
to the underpaid. New methods of meeting this obligation 
were adopted. Social settlements sprang up in the cities 
side by side with the religious mission and the charity or- 
ganization. The Church became as conspicuously the 
agency for "social service" as it had been the "means of 
grace" in the work of individual salvation. 

The social revolution has brought about very many 
changes, more numerous however and more varied than 
radical in character. On the whole they have been bene- 
ficial. They have made the return to a narrow individu- 
alism impossible. But it cannot be said that the social 
revolution has fulfilled the threat or the promise of social- 
ism as an organized power. What is yet in store for the 
world under the extension and closer organization of so- 
cialism into internationalism, is one of the anxious ques- 
tions attending the rapid development of class conscious- 
ness. Enough has transpired to show that communistic 
socialism proposes to occupy a political territory outside 
and beyond the limits of democracy. Democracy, as the 
expression of the will of the majority, can have no place 
for the rule of a conscious minority, the working tenet of 
Bolshevism. 

Such was the fortune of my generation in respect to the 
time in which its lot was cast — a time of new and aggres- 
sive intellectual demands, of unfinished moral tasks, of 
widespread changes in the social order. As may be seen 
from this brief retrospect, it was not a time through which 
one could find his way clearly, either the way of knowledge 



i8 MY GENERATION 

or the way of duty. But it was from first to last, as I have 
said, a period of incentive and challenge. One felt all the 
while that he was living in the region of undiscovered 
truth. He was constantly made aware of the presence of 
some unsatisfied opportunity. When compared with the 
times which have burst upon us with such sudden and 
appalling fury, the times which I have described seem 
orderly and undisturbed; but when at last the true per- 
spective of history is reached, I doubt not that they 
will regain their natural place in the opening era of the 
modern world. 



CHAPTER II 

THE PERSONAL BACKGROUND 

Ancestry and Early Home — School and College 

However clearly one may become conscious that he is in 
and of his own generation, he is for a time still more con- 
scious that his point of view lies somewhere along the line 
of approach to it, through the family and institutional life 
of the past. My approach to my generation was through 
the New England home and the New England college. I 
am still conscious that these gave me not only the early 
point of view, but initiative, direction, and restraint. This 
fact of directive force is emphasized by those slight diver- 
gences from a common background which so often lead to 
such great variety, if not diversity, of result. At the recep- 
tion attending the inauguration of Dr. Alderman as Presi- 
dent of the University of Virginia, I was greeted with great 
heartiness by one of the older members of the Southern 
branch of my own family — "Well! how are you at last, 
my long lost brother? " That our family lines had not often 
run together when we thus met was due to a divergence 
back in the fourth generation, somewhere in the sixteenth 
century, when of four brothers who left the old home in 
Kent for the new world, one came by way of Bermuda, 
to which he had received a government appointment, 
from whom sprang the Southern members of the Tucker 
family — a slight divergence, but enough to spread the 
family lines in due time to either side of the breach of 
the Civil War. 



20 MY GENERATION 

ANCESTRY AND EARLY HOME 

The town of Griswold, Connecticut, where I was born 
July 13, 1839, in the little parish of Pachaug lying on the 
river of the same name, means more to me as the home of 
my ancestors than as my own birthplace. To borrow the 
.euphemism, through which a quaint old friend used to put 
aside the actual place of his birth in favor of the place 
which he could identify by memory, "my conscious exist- 
ence began" in the neighboring city of Norwich, to which 
my father removed soon after I was born. My grandfather 
Tucker whose name I took (having been born on the day 
of his burial) was the fifth in descent from Robert Tucker, 
who brought the family name from England in 1635. 
Robert Tucker settled first in Weymouth, Massachusetts, 
and afterwards in Gloucester, and Milton, in all of which 
places he filled the office of recorder or town clerk. Early in 
the next century, his descendants came into eastern Con- 
necticut, into what afterwards became the township of 
Griswold ; and into this immediate region came the Testers, 
the Morgans, the Coits, the Johnsons, the Tylers, the 
Lords, — families with which my own family came into 
close relationships. As will be seen from the names, these 
families were all of English origin. The population of this 
part of Connecticut was at this date, and for a considerable 
time, entirely homogeneous, with a single exception. There 
were not a few colored people. My earliest remembrance 
of persons is of my colored nurse. 

The times in which the development of the country and 
the blending of families were taking place, were evidently 
-prosperous and happy. The homes which still remain bear 
evidence of an abundant and hospitable domestic life. The 



1 



THE PERSONAL BACKGROUND 21 

land was brought under close cultivation, judging by the 
size of the walled fields. The streams were beginning to be 
utilized for manufacturing. Jewett City, a village in Gris- 
wold lying on the Quinnebaug, grew up rapidly into a 
manufacturing community. Norwich, the center of trade 
and of social life in the region, was of easy access, and the 
Sound boats from Norwich brought New York within less 
than a day's journey. Even rural society had its conven- 
tions, as appears from the fact, of which I have been di- 
rectly informed, that as late as 1840 families were seated 
in the village of Griswold church with due regard to their 
standing in the community. 

My grandfather's house stood on the village green. It 
was of unusually good proportions, and ample for the uses 
of a family large in itself, and given to hospitality. One 
feature which especially delighted me in my early visits 
was the stoop - — a large room open to the south, taking 
the place of a piazza, but offering better shelter from wind 
or sun. There was also a long ell, containing several extra 
rooms, among which was a separate housekeeping apart- 
ment. This arrangement was, in accordance with the provi- 
sion of the time, for unattached women near of kin. In the 
present instance, it served as the home of my grandmother's 
sister, known as Aunt Zerviah, whom I recall as a most vi- 
vacious old lady who knew how to add very much to the 
entertainment of a visiting boy. I have often thought that 
the custom in question must have been conducive to the 
self-respect of the occupant of such an apartment, and also 
in many cases to the harmony of large country households. 

My grandfather was known throughout the region as 
" Squire Tucker," a title occasionally given by courtesy to 
some man prominent in affairs. Judged by his success in 



22 MY GENERATION 

business, especially as a pioneer in manufacturing, he was 
a man of marked initiative and force of character. He was 
actively interested in politics, and at times represented 
the town in the state legislature. His diary shows him also 
to have been much given to introspection and reflection 
— a rather unusual association of natural qualities. He 
was devoted to his home, and interested himself person- 
ally in the training and education of his children. At 
the time of his death (at fifty-seven), the family consisted 
of my grandmother and six children — two sons and four 
daughters. My father was the eldest, and at this time 
was twenty-four years of age. He had been fitted for col- 
lege, and had actually entered Amherst (in 1833), but with- 
drew to go into business partnership with his father and 
cousin. Soon after he married Sarah White, the elder 
daughter of Captain Joseph Lester, of Griswold. He was 
then twenty-two, and she twenty. I do not refer to this 
early marriage as representing the common age, though 
my mother's only sister was married at the age of eighteen 
to the young pastor of the village church, the Reverend 
William R. Jewett, of whom I shall have much to say. 
Within two years after my grandfather's death, the affairs 
in the home had been so far arranged, that my father was 
able to carry out his plan of making his home and business 
headquarters at Norwich, which thus became the home of 
my childhood, till the death of my mother in my eighth 
year. All my memories of that time and place are full of 
charm, and some of them are very clear. I recall distinctly 
my playmates — Charlie Coit, George and Dick Ripley, 
Bela Learned, Kirk Leavens, and Sam Merwin. I recall 
places with equal distinctness. Norwich was a town, in 
many of its local associations, to delight the heart of a small 



THE PERSONAL BACKGROUND 23 

boy — the "landing" at the head of the Thames, formed 
by the junction of the Yantie and Shetucket, where the 
passengers of the steamboat train from Boston then took 
the boat for New York; the "httle plain" where I lived, 
with Savin's Hill in the background carrying the jail of 
fearful suggestion just over its summit; the "big plain" a 
mile above at Norwich Town used as a muster field; the 
little shops at the landing full of boy's treasures; and the 
stately homes which even a boy's eyes could really see — 
all these come back to me under the full charm of memory. 
There was one object above others which stirred my boyish 
sentiment and imagination — the then newly erected mon- 
ument to Uncas, chief of the tribe of Mohican Indians, the 
faithful friend and ally of the early settlers, from whom 
came the site of the city of Norwich. It was Samson Occom 
of this tribe, whose application to enter Dr. Wheelock's 
school in the neighboring town of Lebanon transformed it 
into the Indian School which became the precursor of 
Dartmouth College. As a boy I knew nothing of this con- 
nection, but in these last years I have liked to relate this, 
among some other scenes of my boyhood, to my later work. 
My birthplace was within easy distance of the town of 
Windham, the birthplace of Eleazar Wheelock, the 
Founder of Dartmouth, and nearer still to Lebanon, the 
birthplace of his son and successor to the presidency of 
the college. As the ninth president of Dartmouth, the suc- 
cession to the Wheelocks never seemed as remote and un- 
real to me as would doubtless have been the case but for 
these early impressions and associations. 

The one grief attaching to these memories is the fact 
that I have so little remembrance of my mother. How much 
would I exchange for a satisfying glimpse of her face! Her 



24 MY GENERATION 

portrait shows a somewhat sad face, but all who remember 
her speak of her great vivacity and good-humor, her 
alertness and courage, the freedom and fascination of her 
manner. Doubtless it is well ordered that the lesser things 
of childhood lodge most firmly in memory, but it may yet 
be true that the greater things really find their way into 
the unconscious influences which affect the whole after life. 
I can see that the two persons who have had the most effect 
upon my imagination were my grandfather, whom I never 
saw, and my mother of whom I have so little personal 
remembrance. 

The death of my mother, followed by the subsequent 
breaking-up of the home in Norwich, brought about a very 
great change in the circumstances of my life. My later boy- 
hood is associated entirely with the town of Plymouth, 
New Hampshire. I have referred to the marriage of my 
mother's sister to the Reverend William R. Jewett, then 
pastor of the church in Griswold. He had now become the 
pastor of the Congregational Church in Plymouth. Thither 
I was taken upon the death of my mother, for the time be- 
ing, but, as it proved to be, for my permanent home. Upon 
the second marriage of my father some years after, and his 
removal to Sandusky, Ohio, and later to Chicago, I was in- 
formally, but in a very real sense, adopted into the home 
of my uncle and aunt, and the name of Jewett was incor- 
porated into my own name. As might be supposed, the 
journey from Norwich to Plymouth was full of exciting 
incidents, chief of which was the celebration of the intro- 
duction of the Cochituate water into Boston the day after 
our arrival there. My father, like most business men from 
eastern Connecticut, when a visitor in Boston, was a guest 
at the United States Hotel. That particular visit at this 



THE PERSONAL BACKGROUND 25 

hotel filled my childish mind with wonder not unmixed with 
awe. I do not know what my thoughts would have been, 
could I have anticipated the fact that forty years later, 
this same small boy would be tried for heresy within these 
same walls, at a court extemporized in the old dining-hall 
of the hotel for the trial of certain Andover professors by 
the Board of Visitors. The railroad journey ended at 
Concord, New Hampshire, or possibly at Meredith 
Bridge, now Laconia, the remainder of the trip being 
taken by stage. As the heavily loaded stage came within 
a short distance of Plymouth, it "took fire," in the ver- 
nacular of the road, — a heated axletree, that is, set the 
wood casing in a flame — and so we entered the town. 
Could any entry have been more to the mind of a small 
boy! 

Plymouth was a shire town of Grafton County, or more 
exactly a half-shire town, dividing the distinction with 
Haverhill. In the distribution of social and professional 
life throughout New England at that time, the proportion 
which fell to the shire towns far exceeded their relative 
rank in population. The towns chosen for county seats 
were usually of good traditions, supported by families 
of position and culture, and the courts brought to them a 
constant influx of legal talent. Jeremiah Mason and Mr. 
Webster were frequent attendants at the court held at 
Plymouth. The town also had the social advantage of its 
site at one of the gateways to the Franconia and White 
Mountains, detaining many travelers by the charm of its 
own immediate environment. Ex-Senator Blair, also an 
adopted son of Plymouth, has often said to me that his 
later knowledge of the country had shown him no town 
more representative of good breeding and good manners, 



26 MY GENERATION 

instancing in proof the characteristics of some of the lead- 
ing families of the time. 

Of course, it would not take a boy with an inherent love 
of sport long to find his place among new playmates. . But 
those whom I recall quite as well as my mates were some of 
the men who answered so well Phillips Brooks's designation 
of "boys' men." Such was one of our neighbors, the best 
fisherman in the region, who was always ready to tell us 
just where we could find the biggest trout, but always 
adding, "It's no use; they'll just sniff at your bait and say 
they guess they'll wait for Sam Rowe to come round." 
And they always did. Such, too, was Benjamin Ward, a 
little farther up the hill, the old cabinet-maker, full of the 
lore of quaint histories. Many an hour have I sat in his 
shop, listening with wondering ears to his tales of lost 
islands of the sea, and buried cities of the land. Such was 
O. H. P. Craig, — later Captain Craig, of the Sixth New 
Hampshire Infantry, — the soul of good-humor and manly 
sense, whose presence radiated so healthy an influence 
over boys, that I do not wonder that as young men they 
followed him in battle. And quite near by my home, 
where I was sent on daily errands, and where I was apt to 
stay much oftener on my own account, were Uncle and 
Aunt Noah Cummings, both equally entitled to the mas- 
culine Noah, the undisputed authorities on all neighbor- 
hood happenings. Of course every boy knew the stage- 
drivers, and was wise in his discriminations about the 
handling of the four-horse and the six-horse teams. Even 
when the coming of the railroad two years later trans- 
ferred something of this wisdom to the names of the en- 
gines, and their respective capacities in speed and power, 
the stages held the center of interest so long as they con- 
trolled the way to the mountains. 



THE PERSONAL BACKGROUND 27 

My early school days were passed chiefly in the "Acad- 
emy" under its changing fortune of teachers; but the 
most unique experience was in a private school taught for 
several sessions in the Methodist vestry by Mr. Cass, a 
graduate of Wesleyan. Mr. Cass was very near-sighted, 
and had the still greater infirmity, for a teacher, of a passion 
for long and unusual words; but he knew how to teach in 
spite of his infirmities. No other teacher whom I ever 
knew could have called a school to order and actually 
achieved the result, in these words, "Let the school now 
preserve tranquillity." 

In a like casual but very real way, every boy took his les- 
sons at first hand, and without partiality, in the school of 
Nature. He learned the true meaning of its democracy. It 
was easy to fling the saddle on his horse, and take a morn- 
ing or evening ride to "Prospect" for the view from Winni- 
pesaukee to the mountains; easy to follow the streams 
with his rod, easy to take all winter sports, though at their 
price. I have never believed that the city boy, developed 
into the summer resident who takes Nature in her gentler 
moods, ever quite knows the meaning of what I have called 
the democracy of Nature — the rule of those great and 
masterful equalities which far surpass any democracy of 
society. 

The village boys of my time were keen politicians. Early 
and late they attended the March meetings in the old town 
house, and were never disappointed if the meetings were 
prolonged into the second day. They knew the personal 
bearing of every vote. They were less surprised than 
many of their elders at the results of some elections. I can 
recall as if it were yesterday, the faces of some of the older 
Democrats of Plymouth on the morning following the first 



28 MY GENERATION 

election in the "Know-Nothing Campaign." A carica- 
turist could have filled his notebook with telling sketches. 

Boyhood in New England before the arrival of the mod- 
ern boy does not suffer by comparison with later condi- 
tions. The things essential to a boy's life were there, not 
ready made for him in modern abundance and often be- 
wilderment, but ready for him to shape to his own ends. 
He was well supplied with the materials, if not with the 
finished product. Village life of the larger type was not 
straitened in itself, nor was it inaccessible to the outer 
world. The knowledge of good and evil came early to the 
mind of an eager and curious boy. The poetic fancy of a 
secluded or sheltered life is a moral delusion. It was no 
easier then than now for a boy to endure the restraints 
necessary to right conduct. But the family training of that 
time did not stand primarily for repression. I should say 
that the prevailing note was freedom. The stage of over- 
training had so far passed by that there was little sense of 
unnecessary restriction. The restrictions put upon a boy 
were for the most part such as were shared by his elders, 
like certain observances of Sunday. They belonged to the 
customs and conventions of social and religious life. The 
forms of religion were a part of the family routine, but its 
realities were no less a pervasive influence. 

The education of the home was concerned with more than 
morals and religion. The home was the medium through 
which a great many educational influences reached the 
mind of a boy. It is a mistake to suppose that there was a 
dearth of interesting books. My uncle's library was that of 
a minister, but I found there just the kind of reading I 
wanted. "Robinson Crusoe," "Pilgrim's Progress," and 
the "Arabian Nights," all well illustrated, made the first 



THE PERSONAL BACKGROUND 29 

appeal to the imagination. Then Scott's "Tales of a Grand- 
father" and the " Waverley Novels," and later Plutarch, 
and the more stirring biographies and histories and books 
of travel. Guests, no less than books, kept the home open to 
the outside life. They made their constant impression, and 
often with the most quickening effect. And above all, the 
personal element entered into the daily education. My 
uncle, to whom I go back with so much interest as well as 
affection, was not what I have called "a boy's man." He 
really did not know how to get into a boy's life, but he 
knew what was so much better, how to let a boy into his 
own life — and how roomy and hospitable it was ! There 
were so many ways in which all unconsciously to himself 
he was a companion or a stimulating presence. He was 
an enthusiastic lover of the mountains, knowing them all 
within a wide range by name, and at home among them 
all. He was a charming conversationalist among his guests, 
and a genuine man among men at large, making it a pleas- 
ure to be by his side in the home or on the road. And he 
knew books that other people would have liked to know, 
and how to make them tell their own story through his 
unconscious enthusiasm, and his equally unconscious but 
very real strain of hero-worship. I am afraid that he let 
some very doubtful historical characters into company 
with the saints. He shared in the fascination which Byron 
cast over Lyman Beecher and some other ministers of the 
time, and never altogether forgave England for the ban- 
ishment of Napoleon to St. Helena. His sense of humor 
was keen, but there was a delightful contradiction about 
it. He would shake his sides over Sidney Smith, but the 
reading of "Pickwick" could draw from him only a sym- 
pathetic smile. 



30 MY GENERATION 

As I recall my own experiences in a Puritan home, and 
those of my mates, I have little sympathy with the men of 
my generation who attribute any subsequent license on 
their part in morals and religion to the strictness of their 
early training. The home life of that period as I saw it had 
found the normal balance between authority and indul- 
gence. There were exceptions, but I am inclined to think 
that a good many of the uncomfortable experiences which 
linger in the minds of some men should be charged to the 
narrowness or temper or obstinacy of individual parents 
rather than to Puritanism. And due account should be kept 
as we grow older with the results of our own youthful mis- 
chiefs and follies. Whatever the Puritan home may have 
been aforetime I know only by report, but when it be- 
came the home for my generation, it stood for a natural, 
intelligent, and reasonably free approach to the world. 

SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 

In the decade which preceded the Civil War, as in the 
previous decades of the century, the college was the domi- 
nant factor in the educational life of the country. It was 
the higher education. The older colleges bearing at the time 
the title of universities were universities only in name, 
except through a loose association in some instances of one 
or two professional schools. The university idea, as I have 
elsewhere noted, did not really enter the educational sys- 
tem till the decade following the war. 

The academy stood in like relation to secondary educa- 
tion. It was until late in the century the secondary school 
of the country. Dr. Harris, former United States Com- 
missioner of Education, is authority for the statement 
that there were about forty public high schools in 1860. 



THE PERSONAL BACKGROUND 31 

Among these were a few notable ones, chiefly in New Eng- 
land, like the Boston Latin. But in 1850, there were over 
6000 academies, with an enrollment of 263,000 pupils, and 
an annual income (including tuition) of $5,800,000. The 
wide distribution of these academies created a great many 
small intellectual centers. They gave, until the public 
school system had produced the full quota of high schools, 
a certain educational advantage to the country towns 
above the cities. The catalogue of any New England col- 
lege of the period will show a large percentage of stu- 
dents from country schools. Account, however, must be 
taken of students from the cities in attendance at these 
schools. 

There was an almost absolute uniformity among the 
older colleges of the period, resulting in a corresponding 
equality in numbers and position. They all had the same 
educational aim, the disciplinary and cultural in distinc- 
tion from the vocational. There had been a time when they 
might have been said to be highly vocational, viewed as 
training schools for the ministry, but that time was long 
past, and the newer vocations had not established their 
claims upon the colleges. I doubt if the ministry ever 
secured such concessions as have now been granted, for 
example, to medicine, by the allowance in many colleges of 
two years of the course to be reckoned for the degrees both 
of A.B. and M.D. I think that Senator Hoar in his remi- 
niscences of life at Harvard (1842-46) ^ underestimates 

^ "I do not think Harvard College had changed very much when I entered 
it on my sixteenth birthday in the year 1842, either in manners, character of 
students or teachers, or the course of instruction, for nearly a century. There 
were some elementary lectures and recitations in astronomy and mechanics. 
There was a short course of lectures on chemistry, accompanied by exhibiting 
a few experiments. But the students had no opportunity for laboratory work. 
There was a delightful course of instruction from Dr. Walker in ethics and meta- 



32 MY GENERATION 

somewhat the range of study then pursued in the colleges, 
but the discipline was strictly intensive. Even some years 
later, it did not reach beyond the ancient languages, 
mathematics and physics, with excursions into astronomy, 
logic and rhetoric, and philosophy and political science. 
"Electives" in the modern languages and experimental 
lectures in chemistry and geology hardly came within the 
scope of the college discipline. 

The most remarkable omissions from the curriculum 
were of modern history and modern literature; but the 
explanation is to be found in the provision made for private 
reading in both departments. College libraries of that time 
were primarily reading libraries. They were known as so- 
ciety libraries and were largely maintained and managed by 
students. These libraries have long since been incorporated 
into the general college library of any given institution, 
but at the time of their active existence they were a great 
stimulus to reading. Students drew books from them up to 
the limit of their allowance, especially for use in the long 
winter vacation. I recall two courses in History which I 
carried on by myself in two successive years — one on the 
English Commonwealth, and one on Spanish conquests in 
America. It seems like a singular inversion in disciplinary 
methods that history and English literature are now made 
the subjects of as intensive study as any subjects in the 
curriculum. 

The curriculum was a fixed quantity in all the colleges. 
This made the ready interchange of students entirelj^ prac- 
ticable; and as there were fewer ties binding a student to a 

physics. . . . There was also some instruction in modern languages, — German, 
French, and Italian, — all of very slight value. But the substance of the instruc- 
tion consisted in learning to translate rather easy Latin and Greek, writing Latin, 
and courses in algebra and geometry not very far advanced." 



THE PERSONAL BACKGROUND 33 

particular college, the number of transfers was relatively 
greater then than now. But the chief effect of the fixed cur- 
riculum was to be seen within each college. It introduced 
and fostered competition in scholarship. It did not for this 
reason make scholars, but it converted a good many rather 
indifferent scholars into competitors. As all the members of 
a class were studying the same subjects at the same time, 
results could be compared according to the same standards. 
Hence a very general, and in some cases, a sensitive, inter- 
est in "marks." And this interest was kept alive by the 
fact that the daily recitation was chiefly oral, and before 
the whole class if, as was usually the case, a class did not 
number over sixty or eighty. There were limits to the de- 
gree of ignorance or stupidity which one liked to display 
before his classmates. The occasional sarcasm of a profes- 
sor was of little account beside the instant and unanimous 
and hearty tributes of one's fellows to his mental lapses. 

A common characteristic of the colleges was the pre- 
dominance of the personal element in teaching. Not only 
was there little of an intermediate character in the way of 
equipment, but little account was made of the science or 
art of teaching. There was little of pedagogical training for 
a professorship. Not all professors had even served an ap- 
prenticeship by tutoring. The faculties were almost en- 
tirely made up of full professors. A freshman had the best 
a college had to offer, equally with a senior. There was thus 
a certain equality of instruction in each college and in all 
the colleges. Every college faculty had its well-recognized 
scholars and influential teachers. The conspicuous names 
which at once come to mind are distributed without pre- 
eminence on the part of one or two colleges. 

As a result of this uniformity among the older colleges, 



1 



34- MY GENERATION 

there was a remarkable numerical equality. I had occasion 
to make comparison, at this point, among four of the older 
colleges during the period of seventy years between the 
close of the Revolutionary War, and the opening of the 
Civil War, with this result. I quote the comparison of two 
decades at the beginning, and two at the close of the period. 

Number of Graduates by Decades 

1790-1800 1800-1810 181,0-1850 1850-1860 

Harvard 394 440 632 870 

Yale 295 518 926 1009 

Princeton 240 328 649 677 

Dartmouth 362 337 591 639 

A further result of the general uniformity among the 
colleges was the tendency to produce something of an edu- 
cational aristocracy among college graduates. I use the 
term "educational" rather than "intellectual," because 
the colleges never included or developed the artistic qual- 
ity; and I use this term rather than the term "social, " be- 
cause college life was not then tributary in any direct way 
to social distinction. The college man stood, however, in 
a distinct relation to the public. Much was expected of 
him. If he returned to his native town to "settle down" he 
met with a certain contempt. It was expected of him that 
he would make his way into the larger world. I think that 
his own consciousness accorded with this expectation. 
Something of the traditional spirit of the English colleges 
in their relation to public duty came over by inheritance 
into the earlier college training in this country, and made 
itself felt in a like "call to account very strictly to the 
world for such talent or power as a man may have." 

When I entered Dartmouth in 1857, I was much better 
prepared to pursue the course of study than to understand 



THE PERSONAL BACKGROUND 35 

this moral significance of a college training. Largely, I sup- 
pose, by my uncle's choice, but also because of the good 
fortune of an unusual Latin instructor in the local academy, 
I began Latin at an early age, so early that I never had 
occasion to study English grammar. Preparatory Greek I 
studied for a much shorter time, but under thoroughly com- 
petent teachers, at Kimball Union Academy, the most pop- 
ular fitting school for Dartmouth at that day. Mathema- 
tics received scant measure among the three requisites for 
college entrance, reduced still further in my case by per- 
sonal restriction. I recall very clearly my examination for 
college. It was made up of a succession of individual, oral 
interviews, conducted by the professors in charge, in their 
private studies. A certain fluency in reading from one or 
two of the prescribed Latin authors brought from Professor 
Sanborn, who was little inclined to waste any unnecessary 
time in so tedious a business, the abrupt but pleasing re- 
mark — "Well, there is no use in eating a joint of mutton 
to tell whether it's tainted or not." The examination by 
Professor Putnam in Greek was much more critical, but 
confined chiefly to the grammar, in which I had been well 
drilled. The examination in mathematics brought me to the 
study of Professor Ira Young — father of the celebrated 
astronomer — just before the dinner hour. I had hardly 
been seated and put at work upon a problem, before the 
dining-room door opened and dinner announced itself. 
After a little, the professor asked me how long it would take 
me to finish my work. I replied (truthfully) that I could n't 
tell. He quickly made his own calculation, asked me a few 
general questions, and closed the interview. The alterna- 
tive was evidently a cold — a very cold — dinner. 
In the college curriculum of the first two years there was 



36 MY GENERATION 

little change from the studies of the preparatory school. 
The change was altogether in the surroundings, in out- 
ward conditions, in atmosphere, in the tone and spirit of 
the common life. It was a change into a world of freedom, 
of individual responsibility, of constant stimulus. As I 
have said, I was not prepared for this larger and more 
stimulating life. The restrictive discipline of the prepara- 
tory school, doubtless necessary, especially in a coeduca- 
tional institution, had repressed certain natural ambitions, 
and developed in their place a good many wayward tend- 
encies. I entered college in a somewhat restive and asser- 
tive mood, disposed to use the new freedom for whatever 
college life had to offer. But I miscalculated its moral ef- 
fect. The new freedom wrought its own transformation. It 
effected with surprising rapidity a change of disposition 
and temper, and thus gave to the various objects of college 
pursuit their chance according to their value. I found that 
the suddenly acquired sense of responsibility produced a 
new and unexpected zest for the essential business of the 
college, and gradually opened a true perspective into the 
essential business of the after life. Without hesitation, I 
date the beginning of any really responsible purpose or 
ambition from my entrance upon college, and ascribe the 
change to the complete readjustment of desires and pur- 
poses which then took place. 

This moral effect of the college atmosphere and environ- 
ment was steadily supported by the college routine. The 
college acted constantly through its totality. Whatever it 
had to offer intellectually or morally, it brought to bear in 
its unity upon every student. The modern college indi- 
vidualizes its subject-matter and in degree, its discipline. 
The elective system has its own moral effect. It naturally 



THE PERSONAL BACKGROUND 37 

tends to the development of responsibility. It also tends 
to much immature criticism, to much questioning of the 
value of any course once chosen, which does not produce 
immediate results. There was little questioning of the value 
of individual parts of the earlier curriculum. The whole 
curriculum was accepted in its entirety, and because of its 
entirety. It was the whole that counted as a whole, not as 
the sum of individual parts, the end in view being mental 
enlargement more than mental furnishing. Modern educa- 
tion assumes that mental enlargement is best effected 
through careful regard to the mental furnishing, and that 
the element of choice is therefore the main factor in mental 
discipline. The contention is so far true, that we are right 
in committing the modern college, under proper safe- 
guards, to the fortune of the elective system, but it is 
impossible to overlook or minimize the effect which was 
produced through the earlier college by concentrating 
attention upon the end, rather than upon the divergent 
means for reaching it. As John Morley has remarked in 
a recent note of warning on the tendencies of modern 
education — "The business and the effect, the splendid 
effect, of universities is not merely to spread the reading 
of books, not merely to give knowledge, but to bring 
students to form habits of mind." 

A further misconception of the effect of the earlier col- 
lege training lies in its assumed impracticability. It is true 
that the classicist has fallen out of the race for practicality, 
just as the scientist for a time yielded place to the eco- 
nomist. The goal of practicality is a "flying goal." In its 
own time, the classical college was a broad and direct means 
to what were at the time practical ends. Before the educa- 
tional approach through the sciences, the study of ancient 



38 MY GENERATION 

history was the educational gateway into the living world. 
It opened into the broad area covered by the operations 
of Church and State. The historical method preceded for 
practical uses the scientific method. History as then under- 
stood was the science of human affairs. Classical study 
was the study of history far more than the study of 
language. Where one student learned to write good Latin, 
or to form his English style on classical models, ten were 
incited by their studies to read history, to take interest in 
the movement of events, to study men. The classical college 
trained men not away from their kind, but for those serv- 
ices and conflicts which were most distinctively human. 

As I compare my recollection of the earlier college with 
my more intimate understanding of the workings of the 
modern college, I note as the essential distinction that the 
college of the earlier type was organized around the idea 
of unity: the modern college is organized around the idea 
of intensiveness. The old-time faculty was a group of 
scholars of similar training, and pervaded by a common 
educational purpose. Each professor was usually a man of 
marked individuality, but his individuality was in and of 
himself, not a reflection in any considerable degree of his 
training. A modern faculty is a body of specialists, or, to 
use the still more modern term, of experts. In like manner, 
the old-time curriculum was constructed with a view to 
the interrelation of its parts, and their mutual relation to 
the whole scheme. The modern curriculum is constructed 
with a view to the largest possible development of each 
separate subject, a purpose made practicable through the 
elective system. The effect of this set of the instructor and 
of the curriculum toward intensiveness, is to carry the 
individual student, whom it reaches, farther on his way to 



THE PERSONAL BACKGROUND 39 

a specific goal. But under this dominating influence the 
modern college parts company more easily with the aver- 
age student. Scholarship below the line of advanced work 
is on the whole more desultory and less cumulative.^ 

This general tendency or drift of the college in its educa- 
tional policy has gone over into what is termed "college 
life." Intensity not unity is the aim of college activities. 
The distinctive college athlete in any department is a 
specialist. He is as much disconnected from his fellows as 
is the specialized scholar. I note this fact, not to decry 
specialization in scholarship, but to show that the principle, 
when put at work seriously in the higher ranges of college 
effort, will find its way into all departments of college activ- 
ity. It is very diflScult to urge the principle with the same 
men in certain directions, and to curb it in other directions. 
The working-out of the principle creates a college habit of 
mind and establishes its own standards of excellence. 

In the midst of the changes in the general influence of a 
college upon its students through changes in educational 
policy one element in college life remains constant — the 
element of comradeship. The public is often surprised at 
the testimony of public men of high intellectual character 

1 The more recent tendencies in academic education, the result in part of the 
war, have been interpreted by some as a return to the college of the earlier type. 
This is a mistaken interpretation. Such a return is impossible; it would be un- 
desirable. That "totality" of impression, to which I have referred as the re- 
sultant of the earlier college, belonged not only to the small college, but to the 
day of the small college. What is now taking place is an advance in constructive 
unity, made necessary by the amount of subject-matter crowding the college 
curriculum, and also by the public demand upon the college graduate for a 
more responsible sense of the advantage of his training. This is the meaning, as 
I interpret the process now going on, of the attempt to construct a more highly 
organized and more closely interrelated curriculum; of the introduction of cer- 
tain courses in the interest of citizenship or of the public welfare, to be taken 
in common by all students; and in the proposed requirement of a comprehensive 
final examination to guarantee some understanding on the part of the college 
graduate of the significance of the college course as a whole. 



40 MY GENERATION 

as to the value of their college associations. Some under the 
influence of sentiment put this value above that of their 
college discipline. The value of these, however, when due al- 
lowance is made for sentiment, is very great. Comradeship 
is more than ordinary companionship. It represents one's 
holdings in the stock of common ideas and purposes. It 
represents that sense of security and trust which is born 
out of well-tried friendship. It represents that spirit which 
declares itself in the common response to a call to adven- 
ture, or to a summons to duty. Whether so recognized or 
not, it is that underlying and abiding element in the college 
inheritance, which makes our colleges the recruiting ground 
for great causes. Richard Hovey has not missed the mark 
in his interpretation of college life in its deeper intimacies, 
and its irresistible incentives, as a "comradeship"; and 
this feature seems to be permanent and self -perpetuating. 



CHAPTER III 

THE ENVIRONMENT OF THE CIVIL WAR 

A TABLET in Webster Hall at Dartmouth, similar to many 
in college halls throughout the country, bears this in- 
scription : 

UPON THIS TABLET ARE INSCRIBED THE NAMES OF 
THE SONS OF DARTMOUTH WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES 
IN THE WAR FOR THE PRESERVATION OF THE UNION 
TO WHICH ARE ADDED IN RECOGNITION OF THEIR 
PERSONAL DEVOTION TO DUTY THE NAMES OF THOSE 
WHO FELL IN THE CONFEDERATE SERVICE. 

Then follow in the order of classes the names of those who 
fell in battle — a few from earlier classes, but by far the 
greater number from the classes graduated just before or 
during the progress of the war. As was natural, the burden 
of the war in its claims for active service rested upon the 
incoming generation. An accredited press correspondent 
has recently stated that "the average age of all who 
fought in the civil war was somewhat under twenty-two 
years." The glory of the conflict was no more theirs than 
of their elder comrades, but the pathos of it was theirs. 
They knew life only in its beginnings and at the end. 

"Dawn was theirs. 
And sunset." 

They had no intervening day. 

No one can recall his early associates, whose heroism 
brought them to untimely death, without a feeling akin to 
reverence. Neither can one mingle with his early associates 
who survived the war, but with whom he had no equal 



42 MY GENERATION 

share in the great comradeship, without the constant re- 
minder, however unconscious they may be of the differ- 
ence, of their superior fortune. It has been a lifelong regret 
to me that I was precluded by a succession of prohibitive 
conditions, beginning with the disability resulting from a 
prolonged attack of typhoid fever, ^ from any active part 
in the war till near its close, and then only in a sub- 
sidiary way. But I have sometimes thought that because 
of this experience I was made more sensitively aware of 
some of those phases of the ordeal of war, other than 
that of battle, through which a generation passes which 
is subjected to the searching realities of war. For the 
ordeal is varied and inclusive. It arrests the daily life at 
every turn, it changes the order and movement of famil- 
iar events, it creates communities of suffering and sacri- 
fice, and above all it tests every man's spirit in his 
relation to his country and to the cause which may be 
at stake. 

Unlike the present war, the Civil War was not unfore- 
seen or even unannounced. For years the country had been 
living under the shadow of it. The title of a widely read 
book was "The Impending Crisis." The Civil War was in 
no sense "unbelievable," "unthinkable," — the terms in 
which we denied to ourselves the possibility of the present 

1 This sickness made a peculiar and lasting impression on me. It was so severe 
and so prolonged that it seemed to me like a withdrawal from the physical world. 
1 was too weak for most of the time to take any conscious part in the life of the 
sick-room or to help myself. The sense of utter helplessness was the one feeling 
by day and night. 1 do not recall that I had any fear of dying, or thought much 
about death. But the world seemed to be very remote. 1 was quite detached from 
it. All this was so real that when 1 came back to the life about me, it seemed like 
the entry into a new world. Nature had changed, and friends. 1 looked upon peo- 
ple with different eyes. They seemed more real, nearer, more intimate. As I look 
back upon the mental and moral effect of this sickness, it seems like a new inter- 
pretation of human nature, a kind of educational course in the real humanities. 



f 



ENVIRONMENT OF THE CIVIL W^AR 43 

war. It was rather seen to be inevitable, and yet its ap- 
proach was none the less unrealized on the part of the 
North, and when it came it found the Government totally 
unprepared. Secretary Seward's prediction of a ninety 
days' war may have been made partly for political effect, 
but it represented an influential body of opinion in Gov- 
ernment circles, apart from Mr. Lincoln, whose sense of 
the meaning of the struggle was more truly prophetic. 

The unreadiness of the nation naturally created a wide- 
spread feeling of impatience. An unmilitary people, fired 
with a great moral purpose, could not understand the de- 
laying requirements of military organization. The cry of 
"On to Richmond" was taken up long before the Army 
of the Potomac was ready for the campaign, and when the 
first campaign ended disastrously, not altogether due, 
however, to a forced initiative, the popular impatience was 
increased rather than diminished. Measured by the time 
required for the creation of a modern army out of civilians, 
the organization of the Army of the Potomac was effected 
with reasonable speed. McClellan was a superb organizer, 
in this regard the Kitchener of the Civil War. In spite of 
his failure before Richmond, the nation was indebted to 
him for the army which under more determined leadership 
finally entered the capital of the Confederacy. 

Perhaps the greatest trial to which the North was sub- 
jected in the early stages of the war was that of disappoint- 
ment in its commanding generals. This was in marked 
contrast with the steady confidence of the South in the 
generalship of Lee. The rapid succession of commanders of 
the Army of the Potomac was disheartening. After Mc- 
Clellan — Pope, McClellan again (battle of Antietam), 
Burnside, Hooker, and Meade — all within a year. The 



44 



MY GENERATION 



loss at this time to the South of Albert Sidney Johnston 
and "Stonewall" Jackson was serious, but it was different 
in its moral effect. It was not till the turn of the tide at 
Gettysburg, with the coincident surrender of Vicksburg, 
that the heart of the North became more assured. The 
second stage of the war under Grant and Sherman had its 
own vicissitudes, but no like disheartening uncertainties. 
It became what would now be called a war of attrition. 

However, before the change in the military conduct of 
the war took place the political situation had become seri- 
ous, and continued to be till the end. The Emancipation 
Proclamation, issued after the battle of Antietam, accen- 
tuated the difference between the political parties of the 
country. To those who followed the lead of Vallandig- 
ham and like obstructionists, "war for the Union was I 
abandoned; war for the negro openly begun." In the judg- 
ment of Mr. Lincoln, emancipation had become a mili- 
tary necessity, indispensable to the preservation of the 
Union. To the extreme radical, the preservation of the 
Union was the subordinate issue when compared with the 
abolition of slavery. There was likewise a division of sen- 
timent among the supporters of the Administration — Re- 
publicans and War Democrats — regarding the measures 
to be taken for the restraint or suppression of compromis- 
ers and obstructionists. The margin of freedom, whether 
of speech or of the press, is necessarily narrow in times 
of national peril. In certain cases, the circumstance may 
make that dangerous or even treasonable which was not 
such in the intention. The Government too, sensitive to 
its responsibilities, may become nervous and overwrought 
under continued strain. The days which followed the dis- 
astrous defeats at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville 



♦i 



ENVIRONMENT OF THE CIVIL WAR 45 

were days of peculiar trial. It was not strange that drastic 
measures were adopted to repress compromising and dis- 
turbing activities. At this distance, the arrest and subse- 
quent banishment of Vallandigham, and the suspension of 
the " Chicago Times," seem to have been unwise if not 
unnecessary, but the aggravation was very great. 

I was at this time in Columbus, Ohio, and though en- 
gaged in teaching, was otherwise brought in various ways 
into direct contact with the current movements in the 
political field. Columbus itself was on the dividing line be- 
tween the earlier reservations, set apart especially for emi- 
grants from Connecticut and Virginia, known as the West- 
ern Reserve, and that of the Little Miami. My home was 
for the time in the family of Judge Miller, of the Probate 
Court, a Virginian from the Shenandoah Valley, "a gen- 
tleman of the old school " in manners and dress, even to 
the wearing of a queue. His sympathies were naturally 
somewhat divided, but his loyalty was unimpeachable. 
His only surviving son, a captain in the Union army, fell at 
Murfreesboro. Many of the lawyers of the city were fre- 
quent callers at his home, some of whom were taking an 
active part in political affairs. As one born with the New 
England traditions, I listened eagerly to their conversation. 
The main subject was the arrest of various persons on the 
charge of "giving aid and comfort to rebels." Columbus 
was one of the centers of the Vallandigham Democracy, 
but the frequency and extent of the arrests brought many 
War Democrats and some Republicans into sympathy 
with this branch of the party. Whenever a free government 
begins to take repressive measures for the national safety, 
it is comparatively easy to organize a party under the cry 
of liberty and personal rights. A great many persons are 



46 MY GENERATION 

sure to lose their sense of proportion in such a crisis. They 
would rather see the larger cause of liberty endangered 
if not defeated, than to see any infringement of personal 
rights and liberties. The revolt against the Government on 
the part of many loyal citizens in Ohio was so great that 
the result of the impending State election was for long 
time in doubt. It was a very great, but most unexpected 
relief when the election of Governor Brough by a majority 
of over 100,000, placed the State firmly in support of the 
Administration. 

The issue of personal rights versus the national safety 
was soon followed by another issue still more demoralizing, 
namely, that of a premature movement for peace based on 
compromise and concessions. The criticism of the Govern- 
ment, to which I have referred, was accompanied, and in 
part sustained, by the sense of weariness and discourage- 
ment as the war still went on without decisive results. To 
such an extent had this feeling developed, that when the 
Democratic Convention met in the summer of '64, the con- 
vention was emboldened to pass a resolution, prepared by 
Vallandigham, based on the assertion of "four years of 
failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war," and 
calling for a " convention of the States or other peaceable 
means" for the restoration of the Union. Horace Greeley 
was equally urgent for immediate peace, and sought to 
bring about specific negotiations — a movement which 
called out Mr. Lincoln's very definite and very decisive 
statement of the terms of peace. "To whom it may con- 
cern: Any proposition which embraces the restoration of 
peace, the integrity of the whole Union, and the abandon- 
ment of slavery, and which comes by and with an author- 
ity that can control the armies now at war against the 



ENVIRONMENT OF THE CIVIL W^AR 47 

United States, will be received and considered by the ex- 
ecutive government of the United States, and will be met 
by liberal terms on other substantial and collateral points, 
and the bearer or bearers thereof shall have safe conduct 
both ways." I have been led to quote this statement partly 
that I may bear witness to the comfort and strength which 
it has given to me at the time of writing, under the demands 
from so many sources for peace without definite and deci- 
sive results. And yet it is but fair to recall, in spite of this 
just and conclusive statement on the part of Mr. Lincoln, 
the dissatisfaction with him personally as well as with the 
Administration, which then pervaded the country. In the 
light of the present universal feeling toward Mr. Lincoln, 
it seems impossible that such a state of feeling could have 
existed. But such was the fact. As I recall those days of 
confusion and distrust, I cannot remember that any one 
really thought of Mr. Lincoln or felt toward him, as every 
one now thinks of him and feels toward him. Many de- 
spaired of his reelection; some openly preferred the elec- 
tion of some other man; here and there a man, like Salmon 
P. Chase, did not hesitate to allow the consideration of his 
name as a candidate. There was a time when Mr. Lin- 
coln himself so far doubted the possibility of his reelec- 
tion that he wrote the now well-known but then private 
memorandum: "This morning, as for some days past, it 
seems exceedingly probable that this administration will 
not be reelected. Then it will be my duty to so cooper- 
ate with the President-elect as to save the Union between 
the election and the inauguration; as he will have se- 
cured his election on such ground that he cannot possi- 
bly save it afterward." Happily for the country, South 
as well as North, his fears were not justified by the 



48 MY GENERATION 

result, but his own state of mind, reflected in that of so 
many of his personal and political friends, shows a phase 
of the ordeal of war which can hardly be surpassed by 
the ordeal of battle. 

In the spring of 1864, having then entered Andover Sem- 
inary, I obtained leave of absence for service in the United 
States Christian Commission, and was ordered to report at 
Nashville, the headquarters of the Army of the Cumber- 
land under General Thomas. The United States Christian 
Commission and the United States Sanitary Commission 
were the two links between the army in the field, and those 
at home most directly and personally concerned in their 
welfare. Of these two Commissions, the former was perhaps 
the more strictly personal in its work, relying less upon 
supplies, but each cooperated with the other, especially in 
the hospitals and on the battle-fields. Its policy, as I have 
said, was to keep the moral forces of the country in the 
closest and most helpful relation with the men in the field. 
With this end in view, the men under its direction were 
pushed as rapidly as possible to the front, and distributed 
among the regiments rather than assigned to specific regi- 
ments. Nashville was a base for army supplies and a site 
for base hospitals. The center of active operation for the 
western Army was Chattanooga, where General Sherman 
was engaged in reorganizing and consolidating the Armies 
of the Cumberland, the Tennessee, and the Ohio, in prepa- 
ration for his march to Atlanta. After a short term of oflBce 
work and hospital visitation at Nashville, I was sent with 
others of my group to Chattanooga, where our work began 
with the men in the encampments. 

Any section of an army seems at first to be inaccessible 
to individual and personal approach. It seems impossible 



ENVIRONMENT OF THE CIVIL WAR 49 

to individualize men so completely organized, or to reach 
them in unorganized groups. But nothing according to my 
experience could be farther from the fact. I found that the 
human approach could be counted upon to reach far 
among men, and to "find" them. The opportunities before 
the Christian Commission were constant and varied — in 
some cases to supplement the regular agencies at work, in 
more cases to take the initiative, so great was the need of 
service especially on the march and in battle. A few entries 
from my diary at the front, the record only of a few con- 
secutive days, may give a better idea of this need than 
any general statement. 

Sunday, May 8. With General Howard's Division on the 
march to Atlanta. Uncertain at what hour march would be re- 
sumed. Morning service with 88th Illinois, a very atten- 
tive audience. Had hardly finished speaking when general call 
was sounded, taken up by the Brigade; in fifteen minutes tents 
down and troops in marching order; two miles to Rocky Face 
Ridge, found there fifteen men of 125th Ohio wounded in morn- 
ing skirmish; staid with them till dusk, then went on with am- 
bulance train to Tunnel Hill. Coffee on the road with 2d Mis- 
souri, Dutch Regiment. 

Monday, May 9. Forenoon assisting in care of wounded: af- 
ternoon attended funeral of Simeon Carter, one of the men for 
whom I had written to his home just before his death; night till 
one o'clock in dressing wounds, 20 cases. 

Tuesday, May 10. Up at half-past three to help in moving 
wounded to train — through the day with brief intervals in 
dressing wounds of men from the field. 

Wednesday and Thursday, May 11th & 12th. Both days at 
hospital. Very little complaint among wounded, enduring of pain 
remarkable. Occasional criticism from oflBcers who suffered from 
frontal attacks made as at Rocky Face Ridge which seemed to 
them needless, but which were deemed necessary to hold the 
enemy while flanking operations were going on. (The direct as- 



50 MY GENERATION 

sault at Kenesaw Mountain was the only move in this campaign 
for which Sherman has been criticised for substituting direct at- 
tack for a flanking movement.) 

Friday, May 13. Started at seven on march from Tunnel Hill. 
Confederate entrenchment evacuated so hastily in night that we 
breakfasted on hoe-cake left before the fire and still warm. The 
dead still lying along the heights stormed by Hooker's Brigade. 
Marched fifteen miles and camped for night with wagon train 
without pitching tent. 

Saturday, May 14. On the road to Resaca; battle opened at 
noon; was stationed where could see the troops deployed in im- 
mediate rear of battle-field. Casualties increased as the day wore 
on, and were severe on the following day. At first wounded cared 
for on the field, but later in hospitals in the rear. In the night 
sent back to the field as it was mistakenly thought that the first 
entrenchment had been carried; at work according to need on 
the field or in the hospital. 

On the march from Atlanta to the sea the work of the 
Commission was suspended. My comrade on the earlier 
march (Lloyd, of Cincinnati) and I carried a dog tent be- 
tween us which w^e pitched at night, unless we found other 
quarters. Naturally our main service was in the field hos- 
pitals, but there was still occasional opportunity for meet- 
ing with groups of the men in the evening encampments. 
Serious, and at times heartrending, as the work was among 
the wounded and dying, the services in the encampments 
were often strangely impressive. As I recall them I am re- 
minded of the singular truthfulness of the lines in the 
"Battle Hymn of the Republic": 

"I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps; 
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps." 



CHAPTER IV 

THE PROFESSION OF THE MINISTRY 

The ordeal of war produced a twofold effect. The war was 
carried on, so far at least as the North was concerned, with 
a heavy heart. It was a civil war, of which fact there were 
constant reminders. There was an entire absence of those 
incentives or excitements which attend a foreign war. The 
Civil War was purely a war for the national preservation 
and the national purification. As Mr. Lincoln saw it, it 
was a war for the national preservation through the na- 
tional purification. In his own words — "This Govern- 
ment cannot endure permanently half slave and half free." 
But this cleansing task, though of the highest ethical 
meaning and in this sense inspiring, was like all things of 
the nature of chastisement, "not joyous but grievous." 
There was little of the glamour of war about it. The war 
did not engender the military spirit. Far more of this spirit 
had been kindled by the Mexican War. The heroes of that 
war, Scott and Taylor, were preferred as presidential can- 
didates to statesmen of the order of Mr. Webster. General 
Grant was in due time chosen to the Presidency, not under 
reflected light of his victories, but in the confidence that he, 
better than any other man, could be trusted to carry out 
the general policy of Mr. Lincoln. General Grant, though 
a great soldier, and only by the necessities of the time and 
by slow training fitted for political duties, was essentially 
a man of peace. In this respect he was a true representative 
of the nation. The victories which brought the war to a 
successful close were not hailed in the spirit of triumph. 



52 MY GENERATION 

There were no prolonged celebrations. The nation pro- 
ceeded at once to disarm itself. A million soldiers made 
haste to return to the duties or the plans they had relin- 
quished on the call to arms. 

On the other hand, there was a deep and abiding sense of 
satisfaction that the task which had been undertaken had 
been thoroughly accomplished. There had been no prema- 
ture or indecisive peace. The outcome was not a compro- 
mise. The nation emerged from the war no longer "half 
slave and half free." The unity of the nation had at last 
been achieved and insured. The country had become to 
the knowledge and in the sight of all the people one and 
indivisible. The change from a sense of fear to a sense of 
security gave a new significance to the national life. The 
integrity of the nation made a new and far-reaching appeal 
to the imagination of the people. They saw the nation not 
only in its wholeness, but also in its vastness — the vast- 
ness of its unpossessed lands and undeveloped resources, 
the vastness also of its human and spiritual possibilities. 
The mind of the nation turned with relief from the domi- 
nating issues of the war, and with a certain impatience 
from the task of political reconstruction, to enter upon the 
realization of the alluring and well-nigh unlimited oppor- 
tunities now before it. The era which followed the war was 
distinctively an era of expansion, visible in the increase . 
of immigration, in the advance of the agricultural frontier, 
in the extension of railroads, in the rise of new industries, 
and in the evolution of the industrial classes. The expan- 
sion of the more spiritual life of the country took place 
more slowly. It could not be seen so readily, but it could 
be felt. 

Naturally so great a change in the national outlook 



THE PROFESSION OF THE MINISTRY 53 

brought about many changes in personal careers, especially 
with those who were within the period of the final choice 
of a business or of a profession. This period now became 
a season of reappraisals and revaluations in the light of 
newly awakened ambitions, or of more decisive appeals of 
duty. As it was at this point that the directive influence 
of the generation upon individual choices and plans began 
to assert itself, I call renewed attention to the fact of this 
influence, that the subsequent course of many individual 
careers involving unexpected changes may be understood. 
Changes which might otherwise be attributed to mere op- 
portunism as a guiding principle, have their explanation 
in this directive and dominating influence which I am em- 
phasizing. A man could not make himself most effective 
or most serviceable without constant regard to the direc- 
tion of the forces which determined the movement of his 
time. There never was a generation in which the small 
consistencies of men counted for so little as against the 
insight and the courage to take the path of progress. 

The personal change in my own case in the choice of a 
profession was from the law to the ministry. While in col- 
lege, my interest was in those courses which had a bearing 
on law. The subject assigned me by the faculty for com- 
mencement was "The Obligation of the Country to its 
Jurists." This predilection toward the law was, however, 
more indicative of my interest and ambition than of any 
definite or well-considered choice of a profession in its re- 
lation to public duties. Doubtless the moral effect of the 
war upon others who had chosen the law, was to confirm 
them in their original choice, and upon others still to lead 
them to make the law their choice. Certainly the law in 
itself can never fail in its appeal to the sober and unselfish 



54 MY GENERATION 

judgment of men. But to me it seemed, upon reflection, 
that the ministry stood for the time being in closer relation 
to what may be termed the personal element in professional 
service. Nor do I hesitate to add that the field of opportu- 
nity which it then offered seemed to be wider when given 
its full range. The moral necessities of the situation made 
their own appeal to the imagination, and taken in connec- 
tion with the new stirrings of thought, carried the appeal 
over into the region of intellectual adventure. I am still 
conscious that the call to the ministry, as I then inter- 
preted it, lacked some of the usual motives. It was not the 
conventional call of the Church. But it took account of 
certain moral and spiritual values which were not then 
emphasized in the creeds, and which had little recognition 
within the sphere of organized religion. It was a call, 
though imperfectly apprehended, to that larger ministry 
which was soon to find its place within the scope of modern 
Christianity. 

I think that this wider interpretation of the call to the 
ministry must have been in the mind of many then enter- 
ing the profession, judging by the subsequent careers of 
some of my immediate associates in Andover Seminary. 
In my own class, several have carried their activities be- 
yond the ^ange of the pastorate, — Archdeacon Allen and 
Dr. Waldron, of Boston, the former of the Episcopal City 
Mission and President of the New England Watch and 
Ward Society, the latter Superintendent of the City Mis- 
sionary Society and Chaplain of the Massachusetts House 
of Representatives from 1879 until his death; Samuel W. 
Dike, founder and Secretary of the New England Divorce 
Reform League; and four college presidents, Francis H. 
Snow, of the University of Kansas, James G. Merrill, of 



THE PROFESSION OF THE MINISTRY SS 

Fiske University, Jolm H. Morley, of Fargo College, and 
myself; and outside my class, but in the group of inti- 
mates, men whose range of thought was wider than that 
of their professional training, as George H. Palmer, of 
Harvard, John H. Denison, of Williams, Cecil F. P. Ban- 
croft, of Phillips (Andover) Academy, Newman Smyth, 
and Joseph Cook. 

Andover Seminary was at this time in a peculiar sense 
a theological school, not a school of Biblical or historical 
criticism like the German schools, nor a school of ec- 
clesiastical dogma like Oxford, nor like the unorganized 
"school" of liberal thought in which Maurice, Kingsley, 
and men of their type were the unaccredited teachers. 
Established to modify the influence of an extreme Cal- 
vinism, and at the same time to counteract the spread 
of Unitarianism, it necessarily developed a controversial 
attitude. It also developed, as a result of its theological 
holdings, a strong missionary spirit. The oldest and most 
influential school of theology in New England, it had 
gained more than local influence through its chair of 
Christian Theology, then occupied by Professor Edwards 
A. Park. It was the custom in those days for students in 
medical and theological schools to shift from one school to 
another, attracted by the fame of the superior teachers, 
often remaining but one year in a given school. The lec- 
tures of the Professor of Christian Theology occupied the 
entire time of the middle year in the seminary curriculum. 
As theology was treated by Professor Park, the lectures 
became the attraction and stimulus of the seminary 
course. I can hardly go farther and affirm with equal as- 
surance their inspirational quality. The stage of earnest 
controversy had passed. There was little to fear theologi- 



56 MY GENERATION 

cally either from extreme Calvinism or from Unitarianism. 
But the controversial form of statement still remained the 
best form for logical and rhetorical effect. The essential 
tenet of the Andover School — at once the liberalizing and 
the sobering influence of its theology — was the freedom 
of the human will. This tenet was reasoned by Professor 
Park with great ingenuity, with no little sarcasm at the 
expense of opponents, and often under a moving conscious- 
ness of the practical effect of the holding of the tenet 
upon human action and destiny. The will was divided and 
subdivided according to its moral responsibilities, and 
according to the results of its choices. There were the ordi- 
nary choices, there were "primary choices," there were 
"predominant choices," and there was the "primary pre- 
dominant choice," which if right, the man was right here 
and hereafter. 

"Mr. Blank," said Professor Park one day to a sup- 
posedly obtuse student, "if Peter had died when he was 
cursing and swearing, where would he have gone.^^ " 

"Gone to heaven, Sir." 

"Doubtless," replied the Professor, somewhat taken 
aback by the promptness of the answer, "but how would 
he have gotten there .f^" 

"Got there on his primary predominant." 

The name of Professor Austin Phelps is always associ- 
ated with that of Professor Park in recalling the Andover 
of the period. They wrought together, the latter in the 
chair of Homiletics (or "Sacred Rhetoric"), for thirty 
years in a remarkable professorial partnership, to which 
it was generally assumed that Professor Phelps contributed 
tlie more spiritual element. But spirituality is difficult to 
define. It was in this case, I think, due in part to a certain 



II 






PROFESSORS IN ANDOVER SEMINARY IN THE EARLY SIXTIES 

Calvin E. Stowe Austin Phelps 

Edwards A. Park 



I 



THE PROFESSION OF THE MINISTRY 57 

introspective habit of mind, and was in part temperamen- 
tal. The lectures of Professor Phelps on "The Theory of 
Preaching" (since published) made the Andover sermon 
a distinct product of the pulpit. It stood for clear and 
accurate thinking, and was always a guarantee of good 
English. There was an educating as well as stimulating 
force about it which made it conducive to long pasto- 
rates. 

Less distinctively of Andover was Professor Calvin E. 
Stowe, of the chair of Sacred Literature, sufficiently dis- 
tinctive, however, in himself, and through his family. 
Professor Stowe came to Andover just as Mrs. Stowe had 
brought out "Uncle Tom's Cabin," written while the 
family was in Brunswick, Maine. The whole family was 
an invigorating presence on Andover Hill. Its various in- 
tellectual gifts had full play under its free and informal 
habits. Professor Stowe was perhaps the most characteris- 
tic member of the group, open, hearty, brusque — a kind 
of English squire in a professor's chair. He was a well- 
informed Biblical student, but an interpreter rather than 
an exegete. His sturdy common sense pervaded the class- 
room like a northwest wind. The vagaries of certain 
German commentators were a constant offense to him and 
an unfailing source of irritation. Not infrequently when a 
student would ask (perhaps innocently) if such or such 
a commentator did not hold an opposite view from that 
he was expounding, he would burst out: "I know he does; 
it's a part of his intolerable conceit. I have no patience 
with him. He is not worth answering." And then he would 
proceed to "answer," growing more heated as he proceeded 
till his "answer" brought him to the invariable conclusion 
■ — "Gentlemen, no more lecture to-day: voice all gone." 



58 MY GENERATION 

Other men had then recently entered the Faculty who 
were to add to its influence and reputation, but these men 
together with the working traditions of the Seminary made 
up the Andover of the day. It represented an advanced 
theology, keen intellectual life, and the spirit of devotion 
for service at home or abroad. What was lacking, and the 
lack was serious, was some fresh, more direct, and pene- 
trating approach to the heart of Christianity. The theo- 
logical advance from old to new school had created an 
unmistakable feeling of satisfaction. The "New England 
Theology" was quite too near the finished article. Like 
every great religious holding of the truth, it was vitalized 
at times by spiritual quickenings, but the continuous 
struggle after truth, the tremendous earnestness of search 
rather than of inquiry, the conflict with doubt, the baflfled 
but determined demand for personal assurance and per- 
sonal possession, were not conspicuously in evidence. The 
theological atmosphere was not highly charged with in- 
tellectual or moral passion. 

The relief from this condition, supplying the very ele- 
ment which was lacking, came to some of us from an unex- 
pected and apparently incidental source. Toward the close 
of my seminary course, the "Life and Letters of Frederick 
W. Robertson," of Brighton, by Stopford A. Brooke, were 
published. Several editions of his sermons had already 
been issued. Taken together, they revealed a mind which 
had passed through the stage of doubt, search, and con- 
flict, and was now able to state the intellectual results of 
personal experience with the lucidity of genius. Robert- 
son's gift was the supreme gift of interpretation. He was 
able to carry over the consideration of theological subjects 
from the region of dialectics into the region of interpreta- 



THE PROFESSION OF THE MINISTRY 59 

tion. He refused to become the champion of any school or 
party. Indeed, no school or party was disposed to accept 
him as a champion. He stood quite alone during his brief 
life, even among those with whom he would have been 
naturally affiliated, not through any obstinate independ- 
ence, but separated from like-minded men by the soli- 
tariness and intensity of his intellectual and spiritual 
experience. 

I refer somewhat at length in this connection to Robert- 
son's career in the desire to explain the unique and timely 
influence which he exerted, and out of a sense of personal 
gratitude. Robertson died at thirty-seven. What may be 
termed his career was comprised within the last six years 
of his life, during his incumbency at Brighton, and his 
influence was chiefly posthumous, entirely so in this coun- 
try and largely so in England. His name was not known as 
a preacher in London, and he received no academic or 
ecclesiastical recognition. The son of an army officer and of 
military ancestry, he had set his heart upon the army and 
had actually received a commission, when at the persua- 
sion of his father, who was a man of strong religious char- 
acter, he entered Brasenose, Oxford, and in due time took 
orders in the Church. His early ministry was of the ordi- 
nary type except for the display of his rare personal quali- 
ties. The stress of theological discussion in England had 
then fallen upon an exciting but secondary issue known as 
the Tractarian Controversy, now associated with the de- 
fection of Newman from the Anglican Church. The con- 
troversy had little interest for Robertson, and no direct 
influence upon him, but indirectly it produced a great 
effect upon him. Confused and disheartened by the unreal- 
ities, to him, at least, of the current religious thought, he 



6o MY GENERATION 

determined upon that search after reality which was to 
lead him ultimately into the assurance of faith. How seri- 
ous the search became has been told by him in a lecture 
before the Workingmen's Institute of Brighton, on the in- 
troduction of skeptical publications into their library — 
one of the most intimate and courageous addresses ever 
given on a sensitive public issue. He there lays bare, out 
of his own experience, that "fearful loneliness of spirit," 
when the soul "begins to feel the nothingness of many of 
the traditionary opinions which have been received with 
implicit confidence, and in that horrible insecurity begins 
also to doubt whether there be anything to believe at all. 
It is an awful hour — let him who has passed through it 
say how awful — when this life has lost its meaning, and 
seems shrivelled into a span; when the grave appears to be 
the end of all, human goodness nothing but a name, and 
the sky above this universe a dead expanse, black with the 
void from which God himself has disappeared." Of course 
this experience took him for the time being from the pul- 
pit. He found refuge and spiritual companionship in the 
solitude of the Tyrol. Otherwise he made his search alone, 
and as the search and the struggle were his, so the result 
bore the distinctive mark of his personality. The result 
was not merely a new acceptance of Christianity; it stood 
for a new meaning of Christianity. And yet he did not 
make the mistake of passing by that which was most evi- 
dent and most easily within reach. His search led him 
directly to the person of Christ and to that phase of it the 
most accessible. "It was the Glory of the Son of Man," 
says his biographer, " which shone roundabout him and 
lightened his way. In the light of this glory he was able to 
gain a true measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ." 



THE PROFESSION OF THE MINISTRY 61 

The charm and the power of Robertson's conception of 
Christianity lay in the naturalness of the conception. It 
made the relation of God to man, and the relation of 
man to God natural. In Robertson's own words, " Christ 
came to reveal a name — the Father. He abolished the 
exclusive ' my ' and taught to pray ' Our Father ' ; He pro- 
claimed God the Father, man the son; man as man, a 
son of God. He came to redeem the world from that igno- 
rance of the relationship which had left men in heart aliens 
and unregenerate." "This, then," he continued, "is the 
Christian revelation — man is God's child and the sin of 
man consists in perpetually living as if it were false." The 
significance of Christian baptism in his view was that it 
declared every one to be a child of God. It revealed and 
aJflSrmed the natural relation of man to God. Something 
of the same view was held by Dr. Rushnell in his theory 
of Christian nurture — "that the child is to grow up a 
Christian, and never know himself as being otherwise." 

I This conception of Christianity, as the power of God 
working on the basis of human sonship, had never been 
laid hold of with such clearness of apprehension, or in- 
terpreted with so deep and inclusive a meaning as in the 
utterances of Robertson when he returned to the pulpit. 
It was the ground of his intense hatred of sin, and of 
his tender, almost reverent, regard for sinning men and 
women. And certainly never was the doctrine of Christ 
enforced with a more passionate devotion to his person. 
. There was a rare combination of influences tending to 
give effect to this presentation of Christianity, when once 
the "Sermons" and the "Life and Letters" of Robertson 
came to be read so widely on both continents. To those 
especially who were studying "theology" with a view to 



62 MY GENERATION 

the Christian ministry, Robertson became in many ways a 
quickening and guiding force. His intellectual insight, the 
clarity of his utterances, the unconsciousness of his art as 
a preacher, his spiritual struggles, his brief and almost 
tragic career, and his unique personality (he was the most 
knightly man in the pulpit of his generation) — all con- 
spired to render him a most timely influence in the world 
of religious thought at the time of my theological studies. 
There was that about his experience of Christian truth and 
about his teaching of it, which struck the note of reality. 
For the impression then made upon my mind of the su- 
preme importance of this quality, in the holding and teach- 
ing of the Christian faith, I am profoundly grateful to the 
influence of the spirit and teachings of Robertson. His 
fundamental conception of Christianity as revealing the 
fact of human sonship, every man by nature a son of 
God, has been the conception which has most influenced 
me in my work in the pulpit and among men. It has given 
me a steady working faith in human nature. I have not 
been afraid of what may have seemed to others to be an 
overestimation of men. 



I 



CHAPTER V 

TWO PASTORATES 

The Franklin Street {Congregational) Church, Manchester, 

New Hampshire, 1867-75 

The Madison Square {Presbyterian) Church, New York City, 

1875-80 

It had been my hope that I might begin my ministry in 
some direct connection with the work of rehgious recon- 
struction following upon the war. With this in view, I spent 
several months in the service of the American Home Mis- 
sionary Society, in investigating religious conditions in 
southwestern Missouri and southeastern Kansas. The sit- 
uation proved to be different from what I had hoped to 
find. There was little chance for religious cooperation in 
these parts while the work of political reconstruction was 
going on. Sectional animosities were in danger of being in- 
tensified rather than allayed by the incoming of new reli- 
gious factors. The churches on the ground were struggling 
to recover themselves, and looked upon the planting of 
other churches as an intrusion. The denominational spirit 
which had been dormant was easily revived. In this cir- 
cumstance it seemed impracticable to carry out smy asso- 
ciated movement, as some of us had intended on leaving 
the Seminary. Individual openings were gradually found, 
but no organized effort, of the significance of the pioneer 
movements of the previous generation in the newer States 
of the West, proved to be timely, or from the religious 
point of view desirable. As an instance of the very suc- 
cessful use of an individual opening, I note the career of 



64 MY GENERATION 

my classmate, James G. Merrill, who became a most in- 
fluential factor in the religious development of the region. 
Previous to undertaking this tour of investigation, I had 
received and declined a call to the Franklin Street Church 
of Manchester, New Hampshire. The call having been 
renewed, after it was found that I did not propose to con- 
tinue in this service, I returned to accept it. I was ordained 
to the ministry on January 24, 1867, and at the same time 
installed as pastor of the Franklin Street Church. 

THE FRANKLIN STREET PASTORATE 

The city of Manchester belonged to a group of young 
manufacturing cities in the valley of the Merrimack, which 
were the precursors of new forms of material development, 
and of new types of social organization throughout New 
England. It had grown from a village of less than a thou- 
sand in 1836 to a population of over ten thousand in 1846, 
at which time it was the largest town in New Hampshire, 
and the first to be incorporated as a city. Twenty years 
later its population had trebled. But the growth was in no 
sense loose and unorganized. The underlying organization 
was the Land and Water Power Company which con- 
trolled the water-power at the Amoskeag Falls, and had 
purchased sufficient adjacent land, not only for the uses of 
the corporation, but also for the initial uses of the city. 
Reservations were made for parks and public buildings. 
Although the development of the city was planned, it was 
not controlled, as in some more recent instances of cities 
known as "corporation communities." The manufacturing 
city of New England was a free city. The original, or in 
some cases originating, corporation had no exclusive civic 
rights. Most of these cities came to represent diversified 



TWO PASTORATES 65 

industries. The Manchester Locomotive Works were in 
time as well known as the cotton mills. Each one of these 
early manufacturing cities has continued to feel the initial 
impulse, but in every case, so far as I know, the expansion 
has been according to its own necessities or ambitions. 

At this stage in its development, Manchester grew by the 
natural inflow of population rather than by importation of 
labor. The native population, still quite large in propor- 
tion to the foreign, came in chiefly from the neighboring 
towns, and from Massachusetts. The foreign population 
was principally Irish, with an admixture of German and 
French. The number of men representing the various 
kinds of business and the professions was relatively large. 
The situation was inviting to men of initiative. There was 
the promise of prosperity on secure foundations. The city 
had gained an established character while yet in the con- 
structive and formative period. The city grew steadily and 
healthily, and men went about their daily work under 
stimulating conditions. 

The spirit of the city was reflected in the character of the 
churches and of the ministry. Of the two Congregational 
churches, the Hanover Street, organized at the very outset, 
had risen to immediate influence under the labors of the 
Reverend Cyrus W. Wallace (whose ministry it was to 
enjoy for forty years), — a man of great moral force made 
peculiarly effective by his native eloquence. The Franklin 
Street had become equally influential through a succession 
of pastorates held by men of varied ability — Henry M. 
Dexter, afterwards editor of the " Congregationalist " ; 
Henry Steele Clarke, later of the Central Presbyterian 
Church, Philadelphia; Samuel C. Bartlett, after his 
pastorate and professorship in Chicago, President of Dart- 



66 MY GENERATION 

mouth College; and William H. Fenn, my immediate pre- 
decessor, a man of brilliant parts in the pulpit and in soci- 
ety, for many years afterwards pastor of the High Street 
Church, Portland, Maine, The effect of this succession was 
twofold. Each pastor drew to the church a certain number 
of like-minded persons, a process which broadened its in- 
tellectual life; and the comparatively frequent choice of 
pastors, especially as they were for the most part young 
men (three including myself were directly from the Semi- 
nary) , made the church in time self-reliant and discerning. 
The educative power of the church over its ministers be- 
came quite as marked as that of its ministers over the 
church.^ I found its unconscious but real training more 
valuable than a graduate course of study. There was an 
utter absence of criticism, the whole attitude was sympa- 
thetic, but I understood at once that much was expected. 
The stimulus, though applied through attention, quick 
appreciation, and hearty response, was none the less to be 
interpreted as a stimulus. 

^ In speaking at the Semi-Centennial of the Franklin Street Chm-ch — Octo- 
ber 9, 1894 — I referred to this as a continuous characteristic of the church. " It 
is one of the pecuhar distinctions of this church, as all of its pastors will testify, 
that the church has educated its ministry as much as its ministry has educated 
the church. The old proverb — 'Like priest like people' — stands partially re- 
versed in its history. With two notable exceptions — I refer to Dr. Bartlett and 
to Dr. Spalding — the church has called into its service from first to last untried 
men, or men who were in the formative stage of their ministry." (At that time 
the number was eleven.) 

I took occasion also at this time to refer to the very happy circumstance of my 
reception into the home of Dr. and Mrs. Josiah Crosby, where I remained till my 
marriage two years later. "How shall I tell you of the generous home which was 
opened to me at my coming, that of Dr. and Mrs. Josiah Crosby.'' What I would 
that I might say to them is the assurance of my growing affection and esteem. 
What I wish particularly to say to you of them is, that not a word was ever said 
by either one touching any members of this congregation which they might not 
have heard to their advantage." To which I might have added that in their per- 
sonal lives, so calm and strong, so full of public spirit, so brave in sorrow, so clear 
of mind in things temporal and spiritual, I found a daily interpretation of the 
Christian faith. 



TWO PASTORATES 67 

I like to recall the influences which were at work in and 
through this early pastorate, they were so determinative 
and so far-reaching in their effect. It was there that I 
learned that first and most imperative lesson of the pulpit 
— to respect one's audience; not to fear it, but to respect 
it. I doubt if there is any habit from which it is so diflScult 
for a preacher to recover, or one in the end more fatal, than 
the habit of dealing in unverified knowledge, of substitut- 
ing the premature appeal for the compelling thought, of 
underestimating the power of the deeper motives which 
underlie the spiritual nature. It was of peculiar advantage 
to me that I began to preach to an audience of severe in- 
tellectual demands, as I was endeavoring from the first 
to train myself to the freedom of direct speech in the pulpit, 
without the habitual use of manuscript or without reliance 
upon verbal memory. I knew, of course, that the surrender 
to spiritual feeling, that the spiritual abandon which the 
truth in hand may call for, was unsafe and ineffective un- 
less the preacher could assume the steady and reliable sup- 
port of clear, terse, and truthful speech — speech which 
would not weaken and disperse his emotional power. But 
no theory of preaching could have meant as much to me as 
the aid which I received from the unconscious cooperation 
of the audience. Whatever of freedom I may have gained 
in the pulpit or on the platform, I owe to the patient and 
sympathetic help of those in my first pastorate whose 
insistence upon the realities of speech was not to be 
misunderstood. 

Among the most encouraging results of the Franklin 
Street pastorate was an experiment carried out in the con- 
structive study of the Bible. It had seemed to me that the 
principle of utilizing a church to its full capacity, through 



68 MY GENERATION 

the careful organization of its benevolence and of its mis- 
sion work, might be applied with even more advantage to 
certain phases of its own inner life. I had felt that the re- 
ceptive habit had been over-developed in the churches, 
particularly in reference to the interpretation of the Scrip- 
tures. "Lessons" and "Lesson Helps" had virtually sup- 
planted the direct and original study of the Bible. To re- 
cover this lost privilege of "searching the Scriptures," the 
church was led to attempt the work of preparing its own 
courses of study for the use of the Sunday School. As a 
preliminary step, a course of lectures was given, running 
for several months, in which I traced in detail the forma- 
tion of the New Testament. The experiment awakened 
great interest, and called forth earnest study on the part of 
those who volunteered for the service. Two courses on Old 
Testament subjects and two on "The Christ of the Gos- 
pels," each occupying a year, were prepared and used. 
The effect was remarkably quickening. The teachers' 
meeting, held at the close of an early Sunday evening serv- 
ice, was very largely attended by members of the congre- 
gation and not infrequently by strangers, and the discus- 
sions were often protracted. The Sunday School doubled 
its membership, the increase coming chiefly from adults. 
And as a final result, the spiritual effect upon the school 
and the church was most significant. I quote the following 
reminiscence from a letter of Judge Samuel Upton, then 
superintendent of the school, to whom we were chiefly in- 
debted for the success of the movement, recalling one of 
the more impressive spiritual incidents connected with it. 
The letter was written for the Semi-Centennial of the 
Church. "Well do I remember," he wrote, "one pleasant 
Sabbath day in the fall of 1874. A quiet stillness pervaded 



TWO PASTORATES 69 

the opening exercises, an earnest though tfulness marked 
the study of the lesson. This was upon the parable of the 
Great Supper, especially upon the excuses made for not 
accepting the invitation. In the absence of the teacher, I 
heard a class, composed of misses, many of them members 
of the High School. In the discussion of the excuses, one of 
them remarked that she thought them trivial and poor. It 
was suggested that the invitation was to each one of them, 
and the question was asked, How does your excuse compare 
with those mentioned in the lesson.'' A moment was given 
for consideration, and then one said that she feared her 
excuse was no better. Another said the same; a third re- 
plied, T make no excuse, I accept the invitation.' It was 
the first fruit of a golden harvest — the gathering into 
the church during the year following of more than eighty 
upon profession of faith — almost all from the Sabbath 
School." 

Perhaps the most interesting feature of the development 
of the church during this period was its social expansion, 
or expansion in the direction of democracy. Like many 
churches of intellectual and social standing in a community 
it had acquired a reputation for exclusiveness. This repu- 
tation entirely belied its spirit. All that was needed to over- 
come it was some fit method of exercising its hospitality. 
Fortunately the site and the structure of the church build- 
ing suggested the method. The church was located on a 
retired street adjacent to the City Hall and the City Li- 
brary. It was passed by many operatives on the way to 
and from their daily work. The women of the church read- 
ily cooperated in a plan of making the parlors on the base- 
ment floor available to the young women operatives for 
their winter evenings. The parlors were fitted up for this 



70 MY GENERATION 

purpose, furnished with reading matter and with games, 
put under the care of a trained worker, and made in all 
possible ways attractive for individual improvement and 
for social entertainment. This experiment in church hos- 
pitality was greatly appreciated, and served its purpose 
admirably till it developed into the Young Women's 
Christian Association of the city. 

The church building itself was a plain structure of the 
type of the old Mount Vernon Street, Boston, and Kirk 
Street, Lowell, modeled after Plymouth Church, Brooklyn. 
The chief characteristic of the auditorium was the space 
allotted to the galleries. When these were unoccupied, as 
was the case at this time in the Franklin Street Church, 
it gave to the whole interior an unsocial appearance. The 
congregation filled the floor to repletion, but it halted at 
the gallery stairs. Social values declined with the ascent. 
At length it was agreed among several families who could 
afford to make the change, to leave their pews below and 
colonize the galleries. It was not long before their presence 
removed the unsocial barrier, and insured more perfectly 
than by any form of solicitation, a response to the hitherto 
unaccepted hospitality of the house. The result was not 
another separate congregation, but the expansion of one 
homogeneous congregation. 

The seven years of pastoral service in the Franklin Street 
Church were to me years of absorbing and satisfying inter- 
est. I had meanwhile no thought of or desire for service else- 
where. I never preached as a candidate in any church, or 
encouraged the solicitations of church committees, how- 
ever persistent, to culminate in a formal call. In two or 
three cases, calls were extended as a more formal way of 
solicitation. One call came to me during the Franklin 



TWO PASTORATES 71 

Street pastorate — from the Pilgrim Church in St. Louis 
— which in other circumstances would have greatly 
moved me. It was a call from the general region where I 
had hoped to begin my ministry; but as I had not found 
it advisable to enter it as a home missionary, I felt that it 
would be inconsistent to make my entrance into it as the 
pastor of a city church. 

The close of my pastorate at Manchester came about 
naturally, and through the local situation. The growth of 
the church had given rise to the question of enlargement 
or of removal. I had advocated on general grounds, as well 
as for local reasons, the policy of the strong church, strong 
not only in resources, but in numbers. When I saw, how- 
ever, that my advocacy was in danger of giving the move- 
ment too much of a personal aspect, I decided that it was 
best to withdraw altogether the personal element, and 
allow the policy to work itself out in its own time upon its 
own merits. Three years later the policy was adopted and 
carried out, insuring the stability and adequate effective- 
ness of the church. In the meantime, the Madison Square 
Church of New York made renewed overtures to me lead- 
ing to a call to the pastorate, which after several con- 
ferences, though without previously occupying the pulpit, 
I accepted, and was installed as pastor of that church on 
the 12th of May, 1875. 

THE MADISON SQUARE PASTORATE 

In looking over such correspondence as has chanced to 
remain regarding the removal to New York, I found a 
letter from Dr. Manning, of the Old South Church, Bos- 
ton, remonstrating in right brotherly fashion against my 
leaving New England. There were other letters of the 



72 MY GENERATION 

same purport, but as there were no determining questions 
of duty apart from the circumstances attending the call, 
I decided upon a change of environment. It seemed to 
me that the traditions of one's religious training should 
not be allowed to fix the limits of his possible service; 
rather that as occasion might demand he should come 
to know, and take a part, in the broader religious life of 
the country. The denominational change involved in the 
present instance was of little account. New England Con- 
gregationalism had its affiliations with that branch of 
Presbyterianism of which the Madison Square Church 
was the chief representative in New York City. The dif- 
ference in polity was hardly discernible in the practical 
working of church life. The real change was in the reli- 
gious atmosphere. The New York of that day was less 
theological, but more religious than Boston. Mr. William 
E. Dodge, Jr., who was an intimate friend of Dr. Duryea 
during his pastorate in New York and Brooklyn, remarked 
after hearing him in his later pastorate at the Central 
Church, Boston, "Duryea is a great preacher, but Boston 
is making him confoundedly metaphysical." Church at- 
tendance and church observances were more in evidence in 
New York. Family religion was held in more scrupulous 
regard. On the other hand, there was less of what may be 
termed the "intellectual appropriation" of religion. Indi- 
vidual doubt or questioning was more rare. Religion was 
conformity, obedience, service. This last characteristic was 
as genuine as the others and was exemplified in many ways. 
Every church had its mission, and the general philan- 
thropic work of the churches was carefully organized and 
generously supported. One of the most touching incidents 
in my pastoral visitation was my visit to an old gentleman 



TWO PASTORATES 73 

of fourscore, upon the occasion of the death of his wife of 
about the same age. They had been of one mind and pur- 
pose in their hves. Probably no one in the city had given 
or raised more money for the rehef of the more acute forms 
of suffering than my aged friend. After a httle he took me 
into the room where his wife lay. Uncovering her face, he 
talked of their common life as only the voice of age and 
love could speak. Suddenly he paused, and took a letter 
from his pocket — "There," said he, "is my check from 
Mrs. Stewart for my woman's hospital." Then resuming 
the conversation as if there had been no interruption — 
there really had been none — he re-covered the face of his 
dead, and withdrew to take up again his now solitary but 
still joyous work. 

During the decade from 1870-80, the pulpit of New 
York had begun to assume an unwonted character, through 
the importation into several of the prominent pulpits of 
preachers from abroad — Dr. John Hall, from Dublin, 
to the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church; Dr. Llewelyn 
D. Bevan, from London, to the Brick Church; Dr. William 
M. Taylor, from Liverpool, to the Broadway Tabernacle; 
and Dr. William Ormiston, from Canada, to the Collegiate 
Church on Twenty-ninth Street. Among the well-known 
preachers native to the city or to New England were Dr. 
Morgan Dix, of Trinity Church; Dr. Potter (afterwards 
Bishop), of Grace Church; Dr. Henry W. Bellows, of All 
Souls (Unitarian) Church, near Union Square; Dr. Howard 
Crosby on Fourth Avenue, and Dr. William Adams at 
Madison Square. The unhappy contention between the 
two great pulpit orators, Henry Ward Beecher and Richard 
S. Storrs, had greatly weakened the influence of the pul- 
pit in the neighboring city. Union Theological Seminary 



74 



MY GENERATION 



was the intellectual stronghold of the more advanced Pres- 
byterianism of the city, under the direction of Professors 
Henry B. Smith, Roswell D. Hitchcock, Philip Schaff, 
George L. Prentiss, and William G. T. Shedd. Not less 
was the moral strength and executive ability of the Presby- 
terian churches exemplified in such laymen as William E. 
Dodge, father and son ; George W. Lane and John Taylor 
Johnston, John Crosby Brown and D. Willis James. 

The Madison Square Church, after the usual method of 
church colonization in New York, was organized out of a 
downtown church — the Central Presbyterian Church on 
Broome Street. This was in 1853, and at the close of the 
following year it was able to occupy its house of worship 
on Madison Square. The growth was immediate and rapid, 
due to two causes — the leadership and ministry of Dr. 
William Adams, and its location. Dr. Adams was a man 
altogether of New England antecedents, the son of John 
Adams, the third principal of Phillips Academy, Andover, 
a graduate of Yale, and of Andover Theological Seminary. 
His first pastorate was at Brighton, Massachusetts. For 
seventeen years he had been the pastor of the church on 
Broome Street, taking with him as the chief asset for the 
new church the reputation, confidence, and affection which 
he had there gained. He had beyond almost any minister 
I have known, the ideal qualifications for the ordinary city 
pastorate, the pastorate of the family church. He was a 
man of such personal presence as never to require a gown 
in the pulpit, of kindling and persuasive speech, sincere 
and unaffected in manner, a man of the domestic affec- 
tions, but equally of high public spirit, moving men in 
public and winning them in private by the power of his 
personality. It was fit that the Madison Square Church 




MADISON SQUARE CHURCH IN THE SEVENTIES 



TWO PASTORATES 75 

should have become known with almost equal recognition 
as Dr. Adams's church. And yet, as I have said, the church 
owed much to its location. Its site on the east side of 
Madison Square, where the tower of the Metropolitan 
Building now stands, was as adequate and as timely for a 
church as the site directly across the park, where the "Fifth 
Avenue" held its long supremacy, was for a hotel. Both 
caught and held for a time in their respective ways the 
social tide as it swept over Twenty-third Street toward the 
north. Madison Square became at once one of the acces- 
sible religious centers, which was to be repeated later on 
upper Fifth Avenue and later still on the west side of the 
Park. The constituency of the church ran from Gramercy 
Park and West Twentieth Street up Fifth and Madison 
Avenues, and along the adjoining streets as far as Forty- 
second Street, and gradually up to Central Park. For this 
choice of its location, as for the subsequent management 
of its business affairs, the church was indebted to George 
W. Lane, for many years Comptroller of the city, and from 
the first a trustee of the church, a man as well known and 
trusted for his sagacity as for his integrity. 

I recall with much distinctness and even vividness my 
first Sunday in the Madison Square pulpit. I had never 
seen the congregation and few had seen me. It was a day 
of first impressions for minister and people. As I faced 
the audience which thronged the church, I found myself 
steadied and quickened by the sensitive and apparently 
eager response to my message. There were faces in that 
unknown congregation which made an immediate and 
lasting impress upon my mind. I preached from the text, 
"God is not the God of the dead, but of the living," — 
the conception of God as more vitally concerned with 



76 MY GENERATION 

human life as it grew more absorbing and controlling, 
with human interests as they multiplied and increased, 
with our individual lives as they became capable of greater 
responsibilities, or became weakened and demoralized 
under the strain of our environment. It was a message to 
the modern man asking where and how he might find God 
— not at first and chiefly in the past, but in the present, 
not among the dead, but among the living. Whatever other 
effects the message may have produced, I was made con- 
scious of this verdict, which was to me the most to be 
desired, "You have made your connection with us; we 
understand you; we are no more strangers." 

As I became more familiar with the congregation, I 
found that there were two somewhat distinct but not 
diverse types of mind in their response to truth. There 
were those who quickly kindled under the reception of it, 
and gave it free play in their own thinking, more affected 
by the quality of inspiration it might possess than by any 
logical conclusion to be drawn from it. Such preeminently 
were Professor Roswell D. Hitchcock, Judge John K. 
Porter, and Mr. Charles Collins, formerly of Hartford, 
Connecticut, a genuine disciple of Dr. Bushnell. There 
were others who absorbed the truth according to its im- 
mediate adaptation to their spiritual needs. The general 
characteristic of the congregation was its mental and 
spiritual accessibility. Individuals and families came to 
church imbued with the spirit of worship, and in a mood 
to be appreciative of such further help as might be gained 
from the service. The degree of this desire for help was 
unexpected. It was especially noticeable among men in 
public life and in the more exacting forms of business. 
Judge Porter once remarked to me that, "Judged by the 



TWO PASTORATES 77 

test of the responsibilities public and private of those who 
attended the church, there was no pulpit in the city which 
had more direct access to the sources of public welfare." 
During my pastorate, two mayors of the city were mem- 
bers of the congregation. My personal intimacy with 
Mayor Wickham gave me unusual opportunity for the 
knowledge of certain phases of the inner as well as public 
life of New York. It was the consciousness of the fact to 
which Judge Porter referred that led me to give to my 
preaching so far as possible the tone of moral invigoration 
and of spiritual quickening. I recognized the fact, of course, 
and acted at fit times upon it, that the discussion of public 
questions had a legitimate place in the pulpit, but the 
essential thing as it seemed to me was to increase the moral 
sensitiveness and to stimulate the moral purpose, of those 
who had most to do with the intricacies and liabilities of 
affairs. And it was at this point that I found, as I have 
said, a ready response. 

The same characteristic of accessibility obtained in all 
the relations to the people. It made pastoral duty a 
pleasure and in many cases a satisfaction. The homes of 
the church stood open to one professionally on the basis 
of personal friendship. And one could count upon an equal 
accessibility in discussing measures in the interest of the 
church, or in the solicitation of funds. Quickness of de- 
cision and promptness in action greatly facilitated re- 
ligious work. An illustration of a certain intimacy in the 
religious life of the church was the midweek meeting in the 
vestry, known in the churches of the city as the "lecture- 
room." The name rightly described the nature of the mid- 
week meeting. It was not altogether or chiefly a prayer 
meeting. The chief feature was a pastoral "lecture" or 



78 MY GENERATION 

informal talk on subjects of \ieeper religious import. 
The meeting was largely, at times very largely, attended 
and allowed the most direct and intimate approach. I was 
often surprised to note the attendance of those from the 
congregation who were not members of the church, to 
whom the service seemed to give spiritual satisfaction and 
strength. 

Naturally the pastoral relations open the way into 
friendships, and at times into intimacies born out of the 
deeper experiences of life; but outside these intimacies 
and friendships it also opens the way into personal asso- 
ciations of a more or less intimate character with men of 
recognized public value. Every influential church in New 
York has in its congregation men of distinction. The 
Madison Square congregation held not a few such men, 
some of whom I came to know in circumstances that 
brought out very clearly the qualities which gave them 
their place in the public thought. I may fitly refer in this 
connection, for the impression made upon my own mind 
by the extraordinary display of qualities, not unusual but 
perhaps for that reason more impressive when exercised 
in some superlative way, to two men of the congregation, 
Cyrus W. Field and Samuel J. Tilden. 

Mr. Field represented in this superlative way the type 
of man "who brings things to pass." The type itself was 
not unfamiliar in the period of material development fol- 
lowing the Civil War, but no such example of it appeared 
then, or has appeared since, as in the man who laid the 
Atlantic cable. The original conception did not belong to 
Mr. Field, but he alone grasped the idea with an unshak- 
able purpose, and brought the bold adventure to reality. 
It was ten years from the organization of the Atlantic 



TWO PASTORATES 79 

Telegraph Company to the completion of the enterprise. 
Eight years of silence intervened between the broken 
message which passed over the first cable, and the final 
accomplishment of unbroken communication between the 
continents — years of persistent elBFort, but of equally 
persistent failure, including bankruptcy, but years clos- 
ing in triumphant success. This mastery of failure was 
Mr. Field's distinction. Adjectives commonly applied to 
one capable of this kind of success — persistent, indefati- 
gable, indomitable — do not define his capacity, or explain 
the great event in his career. Back of all the energies of 
his nature was the faith that constantly visualized the 
end in view, and a will that never for a moment lost 
control of the means for its attainment. 

When I first knew Mr. Tilden, he was passing through 
the ordeal of surrendering the Presidency which had 
seemed to be within his grasp. Out of one hundred and 
eighty-five electoral votes necessary to a choice in the 
election of 1876, he held one hundred and eighty-four 
in undisputed right. Of the votes claimed by his oppo- 
nents, nineteen were in dispute, which, if entirely allowed, 
would complete the number necessary for a choice. 
Eighteen of these were from the States of Louisiana, 
South Carolina, and Florida, localities where the pohtical 
atmosphere was charged with fraud, and one was from 
Oregon. To a mind like that of Mr. Tilden, trained to 
respect for constitutional methods, and exercised in the 
detection of fraud through his exposure of Tammany, 
the resort to a compromise political commission to pass 
upon the votes in dispute seemed a wide departure from 
the Constitution, while the finding of the commission 
seemed to him utterly at variance with the legal evidence. 



8o MY GENERATION 

Nevertheless Mr. Tilden determined to abide by the de- 
cision of the commission, and forbade his friends and his 
party to resist. His conduct was a most remarkable ex- 
hibition of self-control, perhaps the most remarkable in 
the political history of the nation, undemonstrative, but 
wonderfully impressive. As I saw what it meant to him 
and realized its meaning to the country in the crisis through 
which it was passing, I understood the recorded wisdom 
of the old-time morahst, "Better is he that ruleth his 
spirit than he that taketh a city." When I went back some 
six years after leaving New York to conduct the services 
at the funeral of Mr. Tilden at his country home at Gray- 
stone-on-the-Hudson, I was impressed with the sincerity 
of the homage paid to him by the vast company of public 
men there assembled, from President Cleveland and his 
immediate associates to the eminent citizens of the city 
and of the State. 

Of the men with whom I came into professional as well 
as personal relation, no one awakened so deep an affection 
or exerted so great an influence over me as Roswell D. 
Hitchcock, to whom I have already referred as a member 
of the congregation. Dr. Hitchcock was a man of wide 
and genuine learning, but still more remarkable for his 
mental and spiritual insight. He saw religious truth in 
clear perspective and in just proportion. As a church his- 
torian he knew and honored the historic Church, but he 
lived in the full freedom of the spirit. His independence 
could rise, if there was occasion, into courage. He was 
broadly and fearlessly progressive. Personally he was 
capable of sharing the riches of his mind and heart. His 
friendship had the reality and the charm of intimacy. 
Though several years my senior he never allowed the inter- 



TWO PASTORATES 81 

veiling years or the wisdom for which these stood, to create 
the slightest impression of conscious superiority. He was 
to me a most lovable man, not in spite of his great intel- 
lectual gifts, but because of them. I felt whenever I talked 
with him that I had access to the whole man. It was to me 
of great significance in the following years that this in- 
timacy of personal friendship was in no sense dependent 
on frequent contact. The letters which came to me at 
Andover until his death bore the marks of the same rare 
and quickening friendship. 

Professional intimacies were furthered by a semi-social 
and religious club known as Chi Alpha, composed of lead- 
ing ministers, professors, and journalists from aflBliated 
churches. It met every Saturday evening and preserved 
its social character by meeting in the homes of its mem- 
bers. 

It frequently entertained distinguished visitors from 
abroad. At that period — among the seventies — the re- 
ception of churchmen, like Dean Stanley and Canon 
Farrar, Dr. Parker, of the City Temple, London, Dr. 
Dale, of Birmingham, and various Scotch leaders, was 
more frequent and more natural than that of literary men. 
The visit of Dickens, and Thackeray, and even of Matthew 
Arnold, had somewhat the aspect of a commercial ad- 
venture. The visits of these and like guests were seldom 
disconnected from lecturing tours. Chi Alpha was one of 
the oldest of the professional clubs of the city, having 
been founded in 1828. 

The following letter, written to the Secretary on the 
occasion of the eighty-sixth anniversary of the Club, 
gives a glimpse of the ordinary meetings at the time of 
my active membership: 



82 MY GENERATION 

November 25, 1914 

Dear Dr. Webster: 

In response to your invitation, I send you greetings from the 
Chi Alpha of thirty -five to forty years ago. Possibly some of the 
original members were living at that time, but I have no re- 
membrance of any known as such. One of the early habits of 
the society, which I see by your present order of exercises has 
been discontinued, was then in force — supper was served then 
as now at six o'clock, but it was put between the social hour 
and the hour or evening of discussion. I suppose that this was 
a survival of the state of mind which gave us in its time the 
" New York Observer" in two well-separated compartments. 
The social hour was the hour of the wits and the story-tellers. 
Dr. Irenaeus Prime was by far the most delightful story-teller, 
though perhaps Dr. Rogers, of the Reformed Dutch Church on 
Twenty -first Street, was the sharper wit. I recall the beginning 
of one of Dr. Prime's stories, which promised to be one of his 
best, but which never came to a conclusion. Dr. Prime had 
reached the point where he had introduced the man's mother- 
in-law, when, yielding to the temptation to play with his story, 
he remarked by way of parenthesis — "It was his mother-in- 
law by marriage." "Oh," said Dr. Rogers, "a new kind." The 
story, as I have said, was never finished. Chi Alpha was abund- 
antly satisfied with the discovery of a new way of establishing 
this domestic relationship. 

The most serious discussion in Chi Alpha which I remember 
started from an incidental statement by Professor Shedd — 
"God must be just. He may be merciful." The statement in- 
stantly aroused much feeling, which was intensified by a subse- 
quent remark of Dr. Chambers, contrasting the depth of the 
mind of St. Paul with that of the Apostle John. Any one who 
may have known Dr. Prentiss and his passionate feeling toward 
the Apostle John can understand how such a comparison would 
strike his sensitive and chivalrous nature. I think that I never 
saw Chi Alpha thrown into the like intellectual commotion. The 
discussion thus started ran through three or four consecutive 
meetings. I am quite sure that my old neighbor and friend. Dr. 



TWO PASTORATES 83 

Vincent, will recall the discussion, as we commented on it each 
evening on our way home. As I mention some of those who car- 
ried on the discussion you will have little diflSculty, even at this 
time, in arranging them according to their theological sympa- 
thies — Dr. William M. Paxton, Dr, Howard Crosby, Professors 
Schaff and Hitchcock, Dr. Adams, Dr. Hall, Dr. William M. 
Taylor, Dr. George B. Cheever, and Dr. Cuyler. It goes without 
saying that the five-minute limit in debate was not then in vogue. 
The discussion was closed with a paper of remarkable lucidity, 
by Dr. Prentiss, on the question, "What is fundamental in the 
nature of God?" Some years afterwards I tried to get the paper 
for publication in the " Andover Review," but Dr. Prentiss felt 
that it was too vitally related to the discussion to warrant its 
publication, so far removed from its original motive and en- 
vironment. 

I beg you to tender my affectionate greetings to the present 
members of Chi Alpha, many of whom I knew in those earlier 
days of our fellowship, and others of whom I know in ways of 
personal friendship. 
I am 

Most cordially and fraternally yours 

William Jewett Tucker 

To the Rev. George S. Webster, D.D. 
Secretary of Chi Alpha 

Notwithstanding the wide range of personal associa- 
tions incident to a New York pastorate, and the inspiring 
opportunity which it offers through the pulpit, it has its 
sharp limitations. These limitations are largely the result 
of the physical conditions which determine the social life 
of the city. The configuration of the city virtually classifies 
its population socially. It divides the Protestant popula- 
tion between church and chapel. A certain segregation is 
enforced through residence. Class and neighborhood are 
synonymous terms in defining the church relations of a 
family. The distinction goes deeper. It classifies the moral 



84 MY GENERATION 

and spiritual experiences of those living under these dif- 
ferent conditions. The burdens, the temptations, and 
many of the sorrows of the poor are not those of the rich. 
This exclusion of poverty with its attendant evils from 
homes in the distinctively church localities creates a re- 
stricted field of pastoral service, and puts the special 
work of what is known as "social service" at a second 
remove from the pastorate. I am well aware, in saying 
this, of the liability of a "break" in the environment 
which may cause a sudden inflow of the turbid stream 
of the outer life into the more protected regions. It was 
just such a break in the environment of the Madison 
Square Church, which Dr. Parkhurst records in "Our 
Fight with Tammany" (pp. 4, 5), that led him to assume 
the presidency of the Society for the Prevention of Crime 
and to carry on his masterly campaign against the organ- 
ized and officially supported vice of the city. And yet how 
exceptional and almost casual this splendid service appears 
from his reference to the pastoral incident which gave rise 
to it. "Somewhat prior to my first connection with the 
Society, I had become knowing to a condition of things 
throughout the city of which during all the years of my 
residence in town up to that date I had been ignorant, and 
of which, except for a special cause, I should probably 
have continued ignorant." 

A further limitation upon the continuous power of the 
average pastorate lies in the impermanency of the local 
church life of the city. This limitation is due to the same 
general cause as the social segregation to which I have re- 
ferred. Owing to the rapid movement of the church pop- 
ulation within the narrow limits fixed by the configuration 
of the city, a church can hardly expect really to command 



TWO PASTORATES 85 

a given locality for more than a generation ; that is, a gen- 
eration represents the ordinary allowance of time between 
the taking of a favorable location at the flood tide, and 
the ebb tide which leaves the church to struggle with the 
decline in numbers and finally to succumb to it. The Mad- 
ison Square Church occupied Madison Square in 1S5^. In 
1906 it had become necessary to take into serious consid- 
eration the question of removal. A bold attempt was made 
to retain its site on the Square by taking advantage of a 
favorable offer of purchase by the Metropolitan Life In- 
surance Company, which had crowded the church to a 
corner in the enclosure of its own building, and by building 
a unique and most attractive church edifice on the op- 
posite corner of Twenty-fourth Street.^ The attempt, how- 
ever, has not enabled the church to hold the site. As I am 
now writing (1918) a plan is under way for effecting a 
consolidation of the Presbyterian churches in proximity 
to one another below Thirty-fourth Street, — the Old 
First Church at Fifth Avenue and Eleventh Street, the 
University Place Church, and the Madison Square Church. 
Owing to the effect of the recent act for "zoning" the city, 
a new permanency has been given to the residential region 
around Washington Square and lower Fifth Avenue, as 
against the region about Madison Square. Should the pro- 
posed plan be carried out, as now seems probable, the 
new Madison Square Church will be sold, and the church 
itself will survive only as a component part of an im- 
pressive consolidation, especially of church property and 
endowments — a fate on the whole insuring more per- 
manency than usually befalls a New York church in an 

1 The original church was by Upjohn, of Gothic design; the new church, by 
McEim, Mead & White, the main features of which are a "bold portico and 
front and a dome." 



86 MY GENERATION 

attempt at continuous separate existence. (Since the above 
was written this consolidation has actually taken place 
and the sale of the Madison Square Church edifice has 
been effected.) The identity of the local church in the city 
has thus far been best preserved under the Episcopal sys- 
tem of supervision, or under the collegiate system con- 
trolling certain of the Dutch Reformed churches sup- 
ported by original land grants. Presbyterianism has hardly 
proved equal to this perpetuation of the life of the local 
church. It was a favorite theory of Mr. George W. Lane, 
of the Madison Square Church, that a strong church 
should select, in advance of any sign of decline, a location 
to which it might in due time remove, while yet in its 
strength able also to maintain by endowment and annual 
allowance the position from which the main church had 
advanced. A line of church holdings would thus be 
established, following the succession prescribed by the 
peculiar configuration of the city. 

In the spring of 1879, in the fifth year of my pastorate, 
I received an invitation to the chair of Homiletics in 
Andover Theological Seminary, the invitation having in 
view the further object of my taking part in the recon- 
struction of the Seminary then impending. Three years 
before I had been asked by Dr. Edmund R. Peaslee, of 
New York, and Governor Cheney, of New Hampshire, 
representing the Trustees of Dartmouth College, if I 
would consider an invitation to the presidency of the 
college. As I had then been so little time in the pastorate 
of the church, and as the educational work proposed was 
at a second remove at least from the specific work of the 
ministry, I declined the proposal, little foreseeing, how- 
ever, that fifteen years later I should be brought to this 



1 



TWO PASTORATES 87 

position by way of Andover. The invitation to the chair 
at Andover raised at once, and in its broad aspects, the 
question of the relative significance under the conditions 
then existing of the pastoral and the educational branches 
of service in the ministry. It was to me a very serious 
question, becoming more serious the more I considered it. 
I had become directly interested in the aims and problems 
of young men studying for the ministry, through the 
attendance of many of the students of Union Theolog- 
ical Seminary at the Madison Square Church. But the 
large, and as it proved to be the determining, factor in the 
ultimate decision was my conviction that the more im- 
portant issues which were to affect the ministry and the 
Church lay within the sphere of education. In the midst 
of the experiences attending the discharge of pastoral 
duties, and more particularly in the midst of the daily 
studies in preparation for the pulpit, questions would 
arise out of the intellectual and moral changes taking 
place in the new world of thought and action for which 
little time could be found for any satisfying answer. It was 
evident that a process of reconstruction was going on in 
which, if one was to take part at all, he must have a place 
nearer the sources. And the necessity for the closer range 
of thought was equally apparent, whether one considered 
the critical or the social questions which were fast becom- 
ing the problems of modern Christianity. It was under 
this conviction of the need of a nearer approach to the 
distinctive religious issues of the time, and in the hope of 
accomplishing the larger service for the ministry through 
those who were entering, or who might be led to enter it, 
that I decided to exchange the pastorate for the pro- 
fessorship to which I was called. In the view which I took 



88 MY GENERATION 

of the religious situation the step from the church to the 
Seminary was a forward step — my response to the de- 
mand of rehgious progress. 

The changes necessitated by this decision could not be 
carried out without much occasion for sincere regret, and 
at certain points without a very definite sense of loss. 
There was the surrender of the pastorate with its incen- 
tives to spiritual activities; there was the separation from 
the church, in itself a painful process, intensified by the 
reluctance of the church to accept my resignation; ^ and 

^ Among the notices of the press in regard to the resignation from the Madison 
Square Church, the following report of the meeting attending the acceptance of 
the resignation is taken from the New York Tribune under date of October 9, 
1879: 

"At a meeting of the members of the Madison Square Presbyterian Church 
last evening, the resignation of their pastor, the Reverend W. J. Tucker, D.D., 
who has received a call to the Bartlett Professorship of Preaching at Andover 
Theological Seminary, was tendered and accepted. There was a large number 
present. Dr. Tucker, in offering his resignation, remarked that it was already 
well known to them all that he had had under very serious thought during the 
summer the question of a change from the pastorate to work for the ministry. 
He said that the ministry in its claims ought to have a wider hearing among 
young men. The great increase in the means of moral influence demanded this. 
'We seem about to enter, in religious life and thought,' he added, 'upon a period 
of great constructive energy. I believe that we have before us a season, not of 
contention or of apology, but of growth and construction. . . . However reluc- 
tant, therefore, one might otherwise be to listen to this call, he cannot deny the 
claims of its timeliness. And it is only for such reasons as these, which but partly 
express my own convictions, that I can bring myself to ask you for your consent 
to my entering upon this work, and to request, as I do now, that you will accept 
my resignation in the pastorate of this church.' 

"Dr. Tucker closed his address with some words of deep feeling upon the cor- 
dial relations which had existed between his church and himself. George W. Lane 
was then made chairman of the meeting and Charles H. Woodbury secretary. 
Resolutions were adopted expressing deep regret at Dr. Tucker's leaving the 
pastorate, and speaking of his work and his personal qualities in the highest 
terms. 

" Remarks were then made by the Reverend William Adams, D.D., first pastor 
of the church, the Reverend Roswell D. Hitchcock, D.D., the Honorable William 
E. Dodge, and Professor Theodore W. Dwight. 

"Dr. Adams said that he concurred most heartily in the resolutions. He could 
sympathize with Dr. Tucker in his request, for he had once taken a similar step. 
His personal relations with Dr. Tucker had been peculiarly pleasant. 



TWO PASTORATES 89 

there was the sundering of many ties of personal and 
family friendships ; to which I may properly add my regret 
in leaving New York. There was a sincerity in its social 
life which could be felt. Deeper by far than its power to 
fascinate was its power to awaken affection. I had never 
been unmindful of my attachment to New York since I 
first knew it, but I was hardly prepared for the feeling 
awakened in me by a personal incident which occurred 
some years ago in passing through the city. I had but an 
hour between trains, but as I passed from one station to 
another I took my way by the church. It was partly torn 
down to make place for the tower of the Metropolitan 
Building. This I had anticipated. But on going up Park 
Avenue to No. 57, my old home, I found that this also, 
with two adjacent houses, was in ruins through a caving-in 
of the street incident to the excavation for a tunnel. Thus 
dispossessed of my personal holdings in the city, though 
held only by the title of sentiment, there came upon me a 
sudden but veritable attack of homesickness, that unmis- 
takable mark of local affection. 

"Dr. Hitchcock said that he did not believe that there was a person in the con- 
gregation who would not say farewell in great bitterness of personal bereavement 
and sense of loss. He had advised Dr. Tucker to go, because he thought he would 
serve his generation more in giving to the world thirty or forty Christian minis- 
ters each year than by remaining in the most successful pulpit. 

" Mr. Dodge said that he felt that he had lost the presence of a personal friend 
which could not be replaced. He hoped Dr. Tucker's influence would long remain 
in the church, but the bereavement at this parting was very great. 

"Judge Theodore Dwight remarked that the announcement of Dr. Tucker's 
resignation came upon him like a thunderclap. He could say with all the warmth 
possible that he sincerely deplored the loss which the church sustained." 



CHAPTER VI 

THE PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT IN THEOLOGY 

I HAVE said that one of the chief motives for leaving the 
pastorate to enter upon the educational work of the min- 
istry was the desire to study more closely into some of the 
questions which were becoming the problems of modern 
Christianity. Of course the large and inclusive question 
was that of the effect of the impact of the modern world 
upon historic Christianity. Would it detach Christianity 
from its own past? The answer to this question had 
already been made decisively in the negative by both 
branches of the Christian Church, but their answers dif- 
fered. Although the Roman Catholic Church had not 
then pronounced officially upon those tendencies in mod- 
ern thought which were afterwards to be anathematized 
under the term "modernism," its attitude of resistance 
was unmistakable. The attitude of the Protestant churches 
varied from that of suspicion, or open resistance, to that 
of investigation, and in some cases of immediate hospital- 
ity. The Protestant mind which was most distinctively 
Protestant was from the first sympathetic with modern 
thought, and it proved to be the controlling element in 
the various churches. It was able to withstand if not al- 
ways to arrest reactionary tendencies. It was also able to 
influence the modernizing process to such a degree that it 
did not become revolutionary or merely divisive. It gave 
rise to no new sects or denominations. It was carried on 
in all the existing denominations with more or less sharp- 
ness of controversy, but nowhere to the breaking point. 



THE PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT 91 

The term which best expressed the character of this 
modernizing process as it went on in the churches was the 
term "progressive." It was, in fact, actually in use as a 
theological term long before it found so conspicuous a 
place in politics. In 1885, a series of editorial articles ap- 
peared in the "Andover Review, " which were published 
the following year in a book under the title of "Pro- 
gressive Orthodoxy." The part of the title which seemed 
to the authors of the book to call for explanation was the 
term "orthodoxy." They put this term forward in protest 
or challenge against the exclusive claim to progress in 
behalf of heresy or schism. They said in the introduction : 
"We are not insensible to the reality and worth of char- 
acter in the sphere of thought. . . . The word 'orthodox' 
designates theological character. . . . There is a collective 
and a continuous Christian consciousness. Our recognition 
of this relation of the new to the old is expressed in our 
motto, ' Progressive Orthodoxy.' " 

The progressive movement covered three distinct 
though related forms of investigation and research — the 
technically theological, having to do with the method of 
the Divine working in and through nature; the critical, 
employed upon the Scriptures and the early Christian 
literature; the humanistic, concerned with the problems of 
human environment and human destiny. It was this last 
subject of investigation and inquiry upon which my own 
personal and professional interest centered. However, I 
trace briefly the course followed in each section of the pro- 
gressive movement, though in so doing I anticipate some- 
what the results gained. It will thus become evident that 
the claim in its behalf at the first was justified — that the 
movement was not revolutionary but progressive. 



92 MY GENERATION 



1 



The first effect of the progressive departure in the field 
of strictly theological inquiry was to bring about a change 
in the prevailing conception of God. It changed the em- 
phasis from the thought of His transcendence to that of 
His immanence. The conception of God must be affected 
by the advance in our understanding of nature. As an 
English churchman of the evolutionary school has re- 
cently said — "We found that when 'all creation wid- 
ened on man's view' our souls widened and deepened in 
response; Nature was a vaster home for man, but man 
was more at home in it not less but more."^ In this sense 
true scientific progress is always reflected in theological 
progress. The scientific advance from Newton to Darwin 
presupposed a corresponding theological advance. The- 
ology could not accept and appropriate, as in the astro- 
nomical discourses of Dr. Chalmers, the science of as- 
tronomy, and ignore or dispute the new science of biology. 
If the one science seemed to make God greater in the 
sphere of His working, it was reasonable to expect that the 
other science would bring Him nearer in His work, and 
into more intimate relations with the physical conditions 
of human life. If the one science proclaimed the tran- 
scendence of God, the other, it might be assumed with 
equal certainty when once it had wrought out its sure 
conclusions, would reveal God as immanent, a pervasive 
presence in the universe, acting through agencies and 
under laws beneficent in their purpose. 

I think that biological research has already passed the 
stage of emphasis upon the immoral or unmoral "struggle 
for existence," and has begun to show that the evolution- 
ary process as applied to the lower forms of life has an 

* The Spectator, January 19, 1918, p. 56. 



I 



THE PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT 93 

ethical significance in the fact that its cardinal principle 
is not destructive but constructive, working through the 
method of social cooperation. "Altruism," says Professor 
Vernon Kellogg, of Leland Stanford, reviewing a dis- 
cussion with a German biologist at German Headquarters,^ 
" or mutual aid, as the biologists prefer to call it, to escape 
the implication of assuming too much consciousness in it, 
is just as truly a fundamental biologic factor of evolu- 
tion as is the cruel, strictly self-regarding, exterminating 
kind of struggle for existence with which the Neo-Dar- 
winists try to fill our eyes and ears, to the exclusion of the 
recognition of all other factors." Still more explicit is the 
contention of Dr. William Patten, of the chair of Zoology, 
Dartmouth, in a monograph on "Cooperation as a Factor 
in Evolution": ^ 

When we realize that evolution is the summation of power 
through cooperation, that what we call "evil" is that which 
prevents or destroys cooperation, and "good" is that which per- 
petuates and improves cooperation; when we realize that the 
"struggle for existence" is a struggle to find better ways and 
means of cooperation, and the "fittest" is the one that cooper- 
ates best — we shall then realize that science and religion and 
government stand on common ground and have a common pur- 
pose. Until this basic truth is recognized there can be no common 
goal for intellectual endeavor; no common rules for individual 
and social conduct; no common standard of what is right and 
what is wrong; and no common knowledge of that which creates 
and preserves and that which destroys. . . . The extent to which 
cooperation is attained depends on the extent to which "right- 
eousness" is attained; for cooperation cannot take place except 
the right things are brought into a definite time and space rela- 

1 Atlantic Monthly, 1917. 

^ Reprinted from the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 
Lv, 1916. 



94 



MY GENERATION 



tion to one another. The chief service of cooperative action, 
therefore, consists in the conveyance of the right kinds of power 
to the right times and places for further cooperative action. 

I think it may be said that to the degree in which scien- 
tists and theologians have entered upon constructive 
work in their respective fields, there has been a marked 
decrease in agnosticism. Not only has a different temper 
of mind been created, but results which can be mutually 
recognized have been secured. The so-called conflict of 
science and religion is a conflict among the uncertainties 
created by new conditions, which relaxes if it does not 
disappear, as the things in dispute emerge into the light of 
clear definition. 

The most sensitive feature of the progressive movement, 
viewed in its effect upon the religious mind, was the appli- 
cation of the principles of historical criticism to the Bible. 
Here lay the severest test of its spiritual value. There 
were definite reasons for this sensitiveness regarding the 
treatment of the Scriptures. The Bible was throughout the 
Protestant churches the recognized source of authority, 
not only so recognized but cherished with affection and 
pride. There was no outward reason for revolt against its 
authority as there was against that of the Church, for 
the authority was self-imposed. And the danger from the 
revolt of reason was well-nigh removed by the allowance 
of perfect freedom of private interpretation. The one point 
of common insistence was its infallibility, which in the 
popular understanding and acceptance meant the equal 
authority of the Bible in all its parts from cover to cover. 

Furthermore, the Bible had acquired a distinct and 
peculiar sacredness from its history. It was the book of 
the martyrs and heroes of the protesting faiths. Men had 



THE PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT 95 

suffered and died that it might be free, unbound, eman- 
cipated from all ecclesiastical control. It had thus gained 
a sanctity from its associations almost equal to that in- 
herent in its words. And to this historic sanctity was 
added the sentiment attaching to its use from generation 
to generation at the family altar, and in the closet of 
devotion. For all devotional uses Bacon has said, "those 
doctrines (are) best and sweetest which flow from a gentle 
crush of the Scriptures," not from the too severe pressure 
of analysis. , 

But the Bible has its place in a world of facts, and in 
this world it can hold its place only by conforming to the 
established rules of evidence. It was difficult for many 
minds to accept so simple but so sweeping a conclusion. 
It was hard for them to acknowledge that faith, like 
poetry according to Robert Frost, "must lean hard on 
facts, so hard at times, that they hurt." Without doubt 
faith under the pressure of modern criticism was forced 
to lean hard upon facts, so hard that they did hurt. It 
would be as unintelligent as it would be unfeeling to 
overlook or make light of the pain which the critical 
handling of the Scriptures brought to many devout and 
intelligent believers. But as the results of Biblical crit- 
icism have become evident, the gain to faith has also 
become evident. It is with no little spiritual satisfaction 
that we now see that Protestantism has in hand a Bible 
which it can hold in consistency with its own well-defined 
principles. A Bible exempted from the tests of historical 
criticism would not have been a Protestant Bible. Few 
will now deny the inconsistency of affirming the right of 
private judgment in respect to the interpretation of the 
Scriptures, while at the same time forbidding the exercise 



96 MY GENERATION 

of this right in the investigation of their origin and his- 
torical order. From the Protestant point of view, it must 
be as necessary to ask what the Bible is and how it came 
to be, as to ask what it means. It is also beginning to be 
understood that we are indebted to the historical criticism 
of the Bible for a clearer perspective of revealed truth. 
The progressive nature of revelation has been determined 
and established by the knowledge of the periods of pro- 
gress, and of the persons and instrumentalities made use 
of for the disclosure and outworking of the Divine plan. 
And a further gain is beginning to be felt, even more 
clearly than it can be seen, in the growing sense of the 
unity of the Church. So long as the Protestant mind was 
in bondage to the literalism of the Scriptures, it was fruit- 
ful in divisions and subdivisions of the Church. Protestant- 
ism had become in too large a degree the religion of the 
sects. It lacked that freedom and confidence and power 
which can come only from the sense of the wholeness of 
Christianity. Historical criticism did more than any other 
one thing to relegate the separating tenets of the sects to 
their proper place. The new conception of the Bible has 
already given a new conception of Christianity, larger, 
simpler, and more unifying. 

The distinctive characteristic of the progressive move- 
ment, though in some respects the least capable of defini- 
tion, was its humanistic impulse. It carried religion, and 
even theology, farther out into human relations. It took 
account of the individual in his human environment. It 
viewed him more definitely as a social being, a part of a 
vast but closely fitting social organization. It followed 
him into those classifications into which modern society 
had divided itself, chiefly as the result of the new economic 



THE PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT 97 

conditions. It refused to obey the mandate of the old 
political economy, and leave the individual to the fortune 
of the market-place. It assumed the right to know the 
reason, for example, of the contentions of capital and 
labor, and the right no less to take part in the whole 
economic conflict according to its social significance. The 
movement early acquired the name of social Christianity. 

There was in this projection of religion into the new 
relations and conditions of modern society, no such dis- 
turbance of religious faith as was caused by the applica- 
tion of the critical method to the Bible. But it disturbed 
the conventional religious sense, and broke in upon many 
religious conventions. The charge was brought against 
the movement that it secularized religion. The religion of 
the previous generation had become largely introspective. 
The proof of its reality rested in certain experiences. It 
sent the religious man to his closet. It also sent him out 
into the "byways and hedges"; it was a religion of charity 
as well as of experience. But it did not send him into the 
shop or the factory. It was not a type of religion fitted to 
understand or to meet the problems involved in the rise 
of industrialism. It virtually accepted the prohibition 
written over the doors of the new workshops — "No ad- 
mittance." It was bold to the highest degree of sacrificial 
courage in its missionary zeal, but it shrank from contact 
with the growing material power of the modern world. It 
saw the religious peril of materialism, but not the religious 
opportunity for the humanizing of material forces. 

The progressive movement also ran counter at this point 
to the prevailing religious philosophy. The philosophy of 
Protestantism was altogether individualistic, while that 
of Catholicism, though taking far more account of the 



98 MY GENERATION 

individual in his religious or non-religious environment, 
was by no means socialistic in the modern sense of the 
term. The long reign of individualism had produced its 
own habit of mind, dominant alike in politics and religion. 
This habit of mind was naturally unsympathetic with 
the social tendencies of modem thought. It could not 
understand the significance, hardly the meaning, of a 
rapidly developing class consciousness under the advance 
of industrialism. Least of all was it able to appreciate the 
religious effect of those associations which were gradually 
alienating large numbers within the industrial commu- 
nities from the services of the Church, and even from its 
influence. 

In carrying out its humanistic impulse, the progressive 
movement did not stop short of the attempt to humanize 
the current theology. The current theology as expressed 
in the creeds was not sensitive to the human demands 
made upon it. The creeds had been for the most part pre- 
pared to meet errors existing at the time, and then con- 
sidered most dangerous. They were unnecessarily explicit 
at points which had lost their first importance. In certain 
other instances conclusions and inferences, logical but 
now unreal, had been allowed to stand. This was especially 
true of the doctrine pertaining to human destiny. It is 
hardly too much to say that the current Christian the- 
ology had reached an impasse at this point. It affirmed the 
necessity of personal salvation through Christ, but it 
recognized no sufficient means or provision for the per- 
sonal knowledge of Christ. Various "apologies" had been 
written to soften or evade the issue, but the issue remained. 
It still challenged theology to find a solution at once log- 
ical and real, capable of harmonizing the teachings of 



THE PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT 99 

Scripture and the rational instincts of faith. I shall 
necessarily have much to say of this issue when I discuss 
the Andover controversy. 

So far as the progressive movement reached the stage 
of open conflict, two Seminaries were directly involved — 
Union in its attempt to liberalize the doctrine of Scripture, 
and Andover in its attempt to humanize, or in the term 
then used, to Christianize the doctrine of human destiny. 
Among individuals who stood forth resolutely in behalf of 
theological progress, especially in this last phase, note 
should be taken of Theodore T. Munger and Washington 
Gladden. Dr. Munger was a disciple of Horace Bushnell, 
and carried over his conception of moral education into 
the problems of destiny. He was a prophetic voice in the 
early stages of theological discussion in his generation. 
His "Freedom of Faith," published in 1883, with an in- 
troductory essay on the New Theology was a direct and 
forceful stimulus to the progressive movement. Dr. 
Gladden, by profession a journalist as well as a minister, 
was more clearly and actively identified with the problems 
of applied Christianity, but his efforts to humanize social 
and industrial conditions had their initiative and con- 
stant support in the humanity of his theology. 



CHAPTER VII 



The Andover Period 
1880-1893 

ANDOVER AS A STORM CENTER AND AS A WORKING CENTER 

I 

The Opening Phase of the Andover Controversy 

II 
The Andover Movement and the Reugious Public 

III 

Andover as a Working Center during the Decade of Conflict 

IV 
The Andover Trial and its Results 



CHAPTER VII 

THE ANDOVER PERIOD 

I 

The Opening Phase of the Andover Controversy 

When I returned to Andover in 1880, fourteen years after 
graduation, I found few changes in the outward or inward 
hfe of the Seminary, and no sign of the impending contro- 
versy. The anticipated reconstruction to which I have 
referred did not assume controversy as a part of its pro- 
gramme. There had been nothing in the history of Andover 
Seminary to warrant such an assumption. On the con- 
trary, it was to be assumed that Andover would continue 
to take its part in such advances and adjustments as 
would still entitle it to a place in theological leadership. 
Nothing could have been more unexpected than any ex- 
hibition of a reactionary spirit at a time when the theo- 
logical world was to be called upon to meet its own issues 
in the new era of progress. As one of my colleagues re- 
marked at a judicial session of the Board of Visitors, "I 
had supposed that Andover, with its origin, and history, 
and traditions, was a good institution for the advance- 
ment of Christian doctrine." The "Andover controversy" 
was not out of time ; it was simply out of place. It belonged 
elsewhere. That it should have fallen upon Andover re- 
quires a brief word of explanation. 

The Andover controversy was not altogether a theolog- 
ical controversy. So much should be intimated at the out- 
set. Personal influences were at work in its inception and 
throughout its continuance. It would be unprofitable to 



102 MY GENERATION 

recall in detail this underlying fact, but the fact remains 
in evidence that the disturbing influences were confined 
from first to last to a group of persons whose activity and 
persistence were entirely out of proportion to their num- 
bers or representative character. The group had its head- 
quarters in the Congregational House, in Boston, but 
whether directed from Boston or Andover was not always 
apparent. It was an influential group, but more influential 
than representative. It did not represent any considerable 
number of the alumni of the Seminary or any large pro- 
portion of its constituency in the churches; and after the 
early period of suspicion and alarm it steadily declined in 
influence. It can hardly be said to have been at any time 
responsibly related to the Seminary. The Faculty then in 
service was a thoroughly united body; and the Trustees, 
with a single exception, were equally united. To under- 
stand how it was possible with such an origin for the 
controversy to be so long continued, and to be carried 
out into issues which required for their settlement a pro- 
tracted legal conflict, one must have some knowledge of 
the peculiar constitution of the Seminary as a corporate 
body. 

The general catalogue of the Seminary, covering its ex- 
istence till it was removed to Cambridge, refers to it as 
a "Theological Seminary in Phillips Academy." The refer- 
ence was accurate. Phillips Academy, founded in 1778, 
had like most of the educational foundations of the time 
a distinct religious intention. In 1795 a special foundation 
was established in the Academy for divinity students. 
It was therefore in strict accordance with the original 
design of the Founders that the Trustees applied to the 
Legislature in 1807 for authority to receive additional 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 103 

funds for the purpose of theological instruction, Madam 
Phoebe Phillips and John Phillips, Esq., the daughter-in- 
law and grandson of the Founder, having obligated them- 
selves to provide suitable buildings for the accommoda- 
tion of sixty students, including a hall for lectures and a 
library. The following year a fellow-townsman, Samuel 
Abbot, established a chair of instruction in Christian 
Theology. Steps were taken looking to the establishment 
of other chairs thought necessary for a theological curri- 
culum. Meanwhile the movement on x^ndover Hill had 
awakened the interest and to a degree the suspicion of a 
section of the same religious body, but holding somewhat 
modified views of Calvinism. There was danger of the 
establishment of a rival school. The danger was averted 
by the incorporation, after much discussion and some 
minor compromises, of the promotors of the rival scheme 
into the Andover Foundation under the title of "Associate 
Founders." These Associates contributed the funds, ample 
for the time, for three additional chairs of instruction, and 
the funds for an additional building. But the contribution 
was not unencumbered. It carried with it the acceptance 
of a board of oversight, known as the "Board of Visitors," 
three in number, nominated in the first instance by 
the Associates to serve with them during their lifetime, 
and thereafter to be self-perpetuating. These Visitors, in 
the language of the Associate Founders, "were to be the 
guardians, overseers, and protectors of our Foundation." 
Their special functions were to preserve unaltered and 
intact the articles of Association, including the Creed, 
which had been modified in some particulars to bring into 
prominence some of the tenets to which the Associates 
attached importance; to interpret the Creed as occasion 



104 



MY GENERATION 



might require; to examine the professors elected by the 
Trustees on their Foundation; and "to take care that the 
duties of every professor on the Foundation be intelH- 
gently and faithfully discharged, and to admonish or re- 
move him either for misbehavior, heterodoxy, incapacity, 
or neglect of the duties of his office." The relation of the 
Visitors to the occupants of chairs on the original or 
general Foundation was not clearly determined. The 
Stone Professorship of the Relations of Christianity and 
Science, established at a later date, was expressly ex- 
empted from the supervision of the Board of Visitors. 
Keeping in mind the fact that the Board of Trustees was 
the governing board, it will be seen that this twofold 
jurisdiction was liable to become at any time the source 
of friction, if not of contention, partly through the over- 
definition of the duties of the Visitors, and partly through 
the want of full coordination between the two Boards. 

During the period of the controversy (1882-92) the 
membership of the Board of Trustees remained practically 
unchanged. This Board consisted of twelve members who 
were chosen with reference to the interests both of the 
Academy and of the Seminary. They were at this time 
Hon. Alpheus Hardy, Chainnan of the Board until his 
death, succeeded by his son Mr. Alpheus H. Hardy as a 
member of the Board, and by Rev. Dr. Daniel T. Fiske 
as Chairman of the Board; Dr. C. F. P. Bancroft, Princi- 
pal of Phillips Academy, and Mr. Edward Taylor, Treas- 
urer of both the Academy and Seminary; Rev. Dr. J. W. 
Wellman, of Newton and Maiden; Thomas H. Russell, 
Esq., of Boston; Hon. Joseph T. Ropes, of Boston; Rev. 
Dr. Alexander McKenzie, of Cambridge; Rev. Dr. William 
H. Wilcox, of Maiden; Hon. Robert R. Bishop, of Newton; 



I 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 105 

President Franklin Carter, of Williams College; and Rev. 
Dr. James G. Vose, of Providence. 

The Board of Visitors in the meantime, though consist- 
ing of but three men, changed its membership more fre- 
quently, creating the constant liability that "a single 
personal variation might change its character entirely." 
The Board in the earlier stage of the controversy consisted 
of President Julius H. Seelye, of Amherst; Hon. Charles 
Theodore Russell, of Boston; and Rev. Dr. William T. 
Eustis, of Springfield. This was the Board which passed 
upon the election of Dr. Newman Smyth, rejecting him 
by a vote of two to one. The Board which rendered the 
mixed decision in the case of the five accused professors, 
condemning one and acquitting four, consisted of Presi- 
dent Julius H. Seelye, Dr. William T. Eustis, and Jonathan 
Marshall, Esq. The Board which finally recalled this de- 
cision and dismissed the case, consisted of Rev. Dr. George 
Leon Walker, President; Rev. Dr. Alonzo H. Quint, and 
Jonathan Marshall, Esq. The personal votes of the mem- 
bers of the Board on these different occasions will be 
given in their connection. At no time, except possibly 
the last, was the vote of the Board unanimous. The fore- 
going facts, if kept in mind, will throw light upon subse- 
quent proceedings. 

When in 1881 at the close of the academic year, Professor 
Park resigned from the Abbot Chair of Christian Theology, 
the Faculty, following the usual procedure in professional 
schools in the event of a vacancy, began to make inquiries 
for the most fit man to present to the Trustees for their 
consideration. After many inquiries and much corre- 
spondence at home and abroad, they presented the name 
of Dr. Newman Smyth, basing their recommendation 



io6 MY GENERATION 

upon Dr. Smyth's reputation as a broad and critical 
scholar, upon his theological opinions embodying, as they 
believed, the best traditions of Andover, upon his well- 
proven work in the pastorate, and especially upon the 
intellectual and spiritual power which he had shown 
through his published works in the sphere of Christian 
Apologetics. Of "Old Faiths in New Light" (1879) the 
"British Quarterly" had said: "The present volume is 
one of those books which mark transition periods of theo- 
logical thought. It is eminently conservative of orthodox 
thought concerning the Bible and the Christ, but is sq by 
throwing aside many old modes and presenting, if not in 
new yet in less familiar lights, their true character and 
claims. We have been greatly interested in the discussion, 
in its vigorous grasp, its moral penetration, its complete- 
ness and its eloquence. Just as Butler constituted a new 
apologetic for the men of his day, so men like Mr. N. 
Smyth are contributing a new apologetic for our own time 
which, as in Butler's case, consists largely in a newer, 
broader, and more invulnerable way of putting the ques- 
tion." This book, taken in connection with the volumes 
on "The Religious Feeling" (1877), and "The Orthodox 
Theology of To-day" (1881), gave the clearest possible 
opportunity for all concerned to ascertain Dr. Smyth's 
theological views as well as to measure his intellectual 
ability. The recommendation of the Faculty was unani- 
mous and hearty; and after full consideration on their 
part the Trustees elected him to the chair of Christian 
Theology with no dissenting vote, one member not voting. 
Announcement of the election was made through the 
public press under date of March 4, 1882; oflBcially through 
an editorial in the "Advertiser" of that date. In its first 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 107 

issue following this announcement, the " Congregationalist " 
declared the appointment unsatisfactory and thereafter 
became the organ of disaffection. Under date of March 2, 
two days before the announcement of his election, a letter 
was sent by a member of the staff of the " Congregation- 
alist" to a member of the Faculty, calling upon the Fac- 
ulty to withdraw the nomination, as in the event of the 
confirmation of Dr. Smyth "the appointment will be 
criticized publicly and vigorously." 

Cannot the Andover Faculty [the letter ran in part] be per- 
suaded to withdraw the nomination of Rev. Newman Smyth to 
be Professor Park's successor? Without underestimating the diffi- 
culty of finding a suitable man for the place, or questioning their 
anxiety to secure the best man for it, or disputing in the least 
Mr. Smyth's possession of marked abilities, the fact remains and 
daily grows more evident, as the news of his election becomes 
known more generally, that such an election is regarded as a 
mistake and as an injury to the best interests of the Seminary, 
which will be both severe and lasting. So far as I have been able 
to learn how it strikes people, and I have taken some pains to 
learn, I have heard of only one man who likes it. The best which 
can be said of it is that it is a most hazardous experiment, and 
people do not feel that Andover just now can afford to run risks 
needlessly. 

If I understand the situation, Mr. Smyth's nomination is be- 
fore the Visitors who have not yet confirmed it. They must 
either confirm or refuse to confirm, or the nomination may be 
withdrawn. If they confirm, the mischief will be done and the 
appointment will be criticized publicly and vigorously in a way 
which will not be pleasant however good-naturedly it may be 
phrased. If they refuse to confirm, it may be painful for Mr. 
Smyth and his friends. It is quite sure to be. But if the Faculty 
could see their way to quietly withdraw the nomination, it 
seems to me that they would save themselves and Mr. Smyth 
some annoyance and the matter could drop, so far as concerns 
him, they beginning to look for some one else. 



io8 MY GENERATION 

This very self-revealing letter brings out clearly two 
facts — first the narrowness of the circle in which the 
writer operated (he found but one man as the result of 
his inquiries who liked the appointment of Dr. Smyth); 
second, the determination of the group at this early stage 
not to accept the decision of the Visitors should they vote 
to confirm Dr. Smyth. It is also a fair inference, from the 
pressure brought to bear on the Faculty to withdraw the 
nomination, that pressure was being brought to bear 
upon the Visitors to reject it. This inference is sustained 
by a sentence in a personal letter from President Seelye 
received a little later — "The Board of Visitors, notwith- 
standing the criticisms with which they have been favored, 
not to say flooded, have been convinced by Dr. Smyth of 
his profound agreement with the established doctrinal 
position of the Seminary." 

The chief ground of objection on the part of the "Con- 
gregationalist " was a relieving theory put forth by Dr. 
Smyth in a defense of the Christian doctrine of retribu- 
tion, to the effect that it was reasonable to believe that 
those who had had no opportunity to know of Christ in 
this life, or to come under the Christian motives to re- 
pentance and faith might have such opportunity here- 
after. The occasion for the introduction of the hypothesis 
was the challenge of a local club of skeptics to justify 
Christianity at this point. The " Congregationalist " re- 
garded it as a vague and unsettling theory having no suf- 
ficient support in Scripture and contrary to the accepted 
doctrine of the universal decisiveness of this life. It was 
charged that this theory constituted "a second probation." 

To the mind of this generation it seems quite impossible 
that so false and contradictory a term as "a second proba- 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 109 

tion " should have been made the rallying cry of the alarm- 
ist, and still more that within certain limits it should have 
been an effective cry. But such was the fact. It actually 
succeeded in bringing together various incongruous ele- 
ments, confirming the view which I have expressed that 
the influences at work were "not altogether theological." 
The title of the editorial in the " Congregationalist," 
"Professor Park's Successor," showed the nature of the 
appeal to that type of mind which takes alarm in any 
change in the method of presenting truth. Professor Park's 
method was that of the advocate. It was directed to a 
given conclusion and was satisfied with the most effective 
means of reaching it. It left a good deal of valuable and 
really pertinent truth by the wayside. Dr. Smyth's method 
promised to be that of the interpreter. It seemed to 
take account of all related truth, and sought to arrive at 
a more comprehensive result than any that could be 
reached as the conclusion of an argument. The term 
"second probation" was also made use of to waken the 
antagonism of the promoters of missions. There are 
"vested interests" in dogma as there are vested interests 
in property. The dogma of the universal decisiveness of 
this life, involving the perdition of the heathen, was a 
vested interest of incalculable value in the judgment of 
certain managers of missionary boards. To question this 
dogma was in their language "to cut the nerve of missions." 
It were better to make Christianity unreasonable if not 
unbelievable. Still further, the term in question was de- 
vised and employed for the special purpose of making the 
hypothesis of Dr. Smyth, regarding the Christian possi- 
bilities of the future state, appear to be contradictory to 
the Andover Creed. As a matter of fact the Andover Creed 



no MY GENERATION 

was silent at this point. The subject had not then come 
under consideration. All that could be said was that, in 
the judgment of the " Congregationalist," the makers of 
the Creed would have condemned the theory in question 
had it been before them. But to say this was to deal in that 
most dangerous of all creations of the human mind — 
"constructive heresy." From this risk the " Congregation- 
alist" did not shrink, but proceeded to affirm that any 
one holding this hypothesis could not honestly subscribe 
to the Creed; and if allowed to subscribe, would subject 
the management of the Seminary to the charge of per- 
version of funds. Under this construction of creeds and of 
credal obligations, the Seminary was conceded to be im- 
movably anchored to a "particular phase of orthodoxy 
in the past," and it was also conceded that it was the duty 
of its guardians to hold fast to this anchorage. 

In this effort to establish the theory of constructive 
heresy on which the charge of dishonesty in subscription 
to the Creed of the Seminary might be based, the "Con- 
gregationalist" went so far in its appeal to the prejudices 
of all opponents of creeds and of creed subscription in 
general that the Faculty felt compelled to arrest the dis- 
cussion by showing its sinister motive and its deplorable 
effect. They justified their action in this matter, while the 
question of the confirmation of Dr. Smyth was still be- 
fore the Visitors by saying in the introductory paragraph 
of their Letter to the public: "While the election of a 
Professor at Andover is in the hands of the Visitors, it 
would ordinarily be improper for either the Board of 
Trustees or the Faculty to engage in a public discussion 
of it. If we exceed the customary rule in the present in- 
stance, it is because the discussion has swept into its 



1 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 1 1 1 

current questions far broader and more vital than that 
of the confirmation or rejection of the Professor-elect — 
questions that touch not only the life of Andover Sem- 
inary, but the perpetuity as well of all trusts conditioned 
by a creed, and even the possibility of an orthodoxy at 
once stable and progressive." This letter was signed by all 
the members of the Faculty in active service. The sub- 
stance of the Letter was given wide circulation in the daily 
press. I find in referring to the files of the "Independent," 
at the time, while it was as yet under the unfettered edi- 
torial management of Dr. William Hayes Ward, the most 
influential organ of liberal orthodoxy, that the Letter was 
pubHshed in full under date of April 13, 1882, with a clear 
interpretation of the Andover situation. It also appeared 
in the " Congregationalist " of the same week with edi- 
torial comment. 

Meanwhile as this discussion went on, Dr. Smyth was 
still in the hands of the Board of Visitors. Their decision 
had gone to the Trustees in a tentative form, but had not 
been made public. It had, however, been foreshadowed 
in a brief personal interview, following the official examin- 
ation of Dr. Smyth. As I had been asked by President 
Seelye, the Chairman of the Board, to introduce Dr. Smyth 
to the Visitors at their session at the Mansion House, An- 
dover, he courteously called at my house on his way to the 
station and briefly outlined their possible verdict. This was 
similar in terms to that finally rendered, and was to the 
effect that while the Board was fully satisfied with the con- 
formity of Dr. Smyth's theological views with their own 
interpretation of the Andover Creed, they so far questioned 
his habit of mind as a teacher that they hesitated to con- 
firm him. Upon Dr. Seelye's asking me what I thought of 



112 MY GENERATION 

this outcome of the case, I was obliged to answer that it 
seemed to me that it was an evasion of the essential issue, 
and that it would be so regarded by the Faculty and the 
Trustees. My reply, though received with attention, was 
evidently not convincing. 

The following letter to Mr. Hardy, President of the 
Board of Trustees, gives a suggestion of the discussion 
which went on between the two Boards while the case 
was pending before the Visitors: 

My dear Mr. Hardy : 

I thank you for forwarding Dr. Seelye's letter, which please 
find enclosed. As in his letter to you he referred very kindly to 
my attitude toward Newman Smyth, I want to give you briefly 
the reasons which hold me to my record. 

1. The election of Newman Smyth unites the Faculty. I do 
not say that we could not unite upon any other man, but I do not 
see the man upon whom we could unite so thoroughly and heart- 
ily. If I were writing to President Seelye, I should enter quite at 
length into this matter, but you know the story better than I do. 

2. The election of Newman Smyth wakens enthusiasm among 
students. Of this you have had the testimony.^ And in the pres- 

' Andover Theological Seminary 
March 11, 1882 
Prof. W. J. Tucker: 

Dear Sir: 
The Congregationalist's editorial on " Professor Park's Successor," which came 
to my notice this morning, suggested for the first time that there might be some 
opposition to the appointment of Dr. Smyth. As I chance to be almost the only 
member of my class remaining here, I feel that I should not do my duty by my 
classmates who have gone away, did I not express to you the intense satisfaction 
with which the appointment has been regarded by us all. I have also heard from 
friends in Union Seminary that the appointment meets with similar enthusiasm 
among the students there. 

In case the feelings of the students would have any weight whatever, I hope 
that at least no negative action will be taken before we have an opportunity to 
present the petition, which I know would spring spontaneously from every 
member of the Seminary, that Dr. Smyth's appointment be confirmed. 

Inasmuch as students, though lower, are yet quite as essential members of the 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 113 

ent state of philosophic thought it would be impossible to elect 
any one who would awaken enthusiasm, who would not also 
waken some opposition. A man might be elected with whom no 
party, or no person could find fault, but he would meet with an 
apathy more to be feared than opposition. 

3. The election of Newman Smyth gives us a man who can 
keep up the connection between Andover and the religious pub- 
lic. He has made an audience through his books. Newman 
Smyth is not an orator like Professor Park. It is a question 
whether he cannot do a larger and more timely work by his pen 
than by his voice. But he is a preacher, as his pastorate at 
Quincy, Illinois, testifies, and as the attempt of the Center 
Church at New Haven to secure him also testifies. 

4. The election of Newman Smyth is the "truest conserva- 
tism." So a man writes to us who estimates the impression upon 
the public. It saves to the Church men who are thinking most 
deeply, and who feel most the attacks of skepticism. 

It is a noticeable fact that no skeptic, no secularist, no man of 
doubtful orthodoxy has claimed Newman Smyth as a heretic. 
No man has pointed out the heresy which has been charged upon 
him. It has been reserved for the friends of Orthodox Christian- 
ity, under what seems to me to be an utter misapprehension, to call 
attention to and emphasize his position in regard to the future. 

What was at most entirely incidental, what has its complete 
explanation in the fact that the work that he was doing was 
purely apologetic, has been seized upon and held up as a dog- 
matic utterance covering the whole case. I should apprehend the 
greatest consequences to the younger ministry from the rejection 
of a man of such marked conservatism, and constructive ten- 
dency. If such a man cannot be accepted in illustration of the 

organism of a seminary as professors, I cannot believe that those who have the 
interests of Andover Seminary in charge, will deliberately disappoint the nu- 
merous students both here and elsewhere, who are hoping to complete their 
preparation for the work of maintaining the old faith in the new light under 
the instruction of the one man in America whom we have long regarded as best 
qualified to give us the equipment that we need. 
Very respectfully yours 

William DeWitt Hyde 



114 MY GENERATION 

orthodoxy of to-day then young men will begin to look elsewhere 
than to orthodoxy for their teachers and helpers, 

5, The election of Newman Smyth bears investigation. To go 
back to his nomination, it was a fact that the reading of his books 
brought the Faculty into complete unity. It was a fact that he 
grew by investigation and correspondence in the esteem of the 
Trustees. It is a fact that the Board of Visitors, "Notwithstand- 
ing the criticisms with which they have been favored, not to say 
flooded, have been convinced by Dr. Smyth of his profound 
agreement with the established doctrinal position of the Semi- 
nary." (Quotation from a private letter from Dr. Seelye.) 

Why then should not the "confirmation of Dr. Smyth be with 
me a matter of strong desire.'* " I do not think that I am held by 
the thought of consistency. The reasons which at first suggested 
his name have grown in weight under the disclosures of the past 
week. 

It did not occur to me when I began to write, that this state- 
ment would go beyond yourself, but you are at entire liberty to 
use it as you think best. 

Very sincerely yours 

Wm. J. Tucker 

In due time the decision of the Visitors was rendered 
to the Trustees, but in tentative form, that in place of 
their own proposed rejection of Dr. Smyth the Trustees 
might be persuaded to withdraw his election. In this 
communication, according to the report of the "Spring- 
field Republican" based on the text of a copy in its pos- 
session, the Visitors declare themselves "convinced of the 
general harmony of Dr. Smyth's theological views with 
those which have been identified with the history of the 
Andover Seminary from the beginning." They are fully 
satisfied that *'he heartily accepts the Creed," and that 
on the special points raised — as to sin, atonement, and 
the future state — "he is in substantial agreement with 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 115 

the characteristic doctrinal position of this Seminary." 
They do, however, find it a difficulty that "he seems to 
conceive of truth poetically rather than speculatively," 
and fear that this "rhetorical quality would interfere with 
his precision as a teacher." It is, they say, on these con- 
siderations rather than on doctrinal questions that they 
hesitate and seek for further light. They ask the Trustees 
to reconsider the matter in view of these objections. The 
Trustees made prompt reply to this communication 
through a committee, acknowledging the courtesy of the 
Visitors in re-submitting the matter to the original 
Board, and expressing their gratification with the de- 
clared approval of Dr. Smyth's theological views, but 
saying that in their judgment the reasons given for the 
hesitancy of the Visitors in ratifying his election were not 
sufficient to warrant them in withdrawing his name, and 
asking in return for further consideration on the part of 
the Visitors. 

In their second communication to the Trustees, the 
Visitors made their tentative decision formal and final, 
somewhat enlarging the statement, but making slight 
changes in the phraseology already reported. In the minute 
which they adopted by a vote of two to one, Judge Russell 
voting in the negative, they say: "The Board of Visitors 
would again express their conviction that the theological 
views of Dr. Newman Smyth are in general harmony 
with those which have been identified with the history of 
the Andover Seminary from the beginning. After his full 
and explicit acceptance of the Creed and his frank addi- 
tional statements in response to our inquiries, it is im- 
possible for us to doubt his substantial agreement with 
the doctrinal position characteristic of this Institution. 



ii6 MY GENERATION 

His natural frankness, his moral earnestness, and his 
Christian sincerity are too evident to permit us after our 
conference with him to raise any question upon this point." 

The point upon which the rejection of Dr. Smyth 
turned, as restated officially, was that it is his habit *'to 
use language more as expression of his feelings than of 
his thoughts, and to conceive of truth sentimentally and 
poetically rather than speculatively and philosophically." 
Of this decision Dr. Duryea wrote: "I am sorry for the 
record of the Visitors. I wish they had acted and given 
no reasons. The disparity between their encomium and 
criticism cannot be accounted for on any hypothesis 
readily suggested to the ordinary reader. This will leave 
them open to the charge of leaning on both sides, and 
coming out of a very small crevice, under the pressure 
they were not able to bring themselves to resist." 

Of course there was no way of exposing the fallacy of 
the judgment of the Visitors regarding the habit of Dr. 
Smyth's mind, except as it should be made evident through 
his subsequent career. As that became more and more a 
matter of public attention, it was seen how capricious the 
judgment had been. Called at once to the First Church 
of New Haven, he made the pulpit of that historic church 
at that academic center a fit complement to the intellec- 
tual life of the University. "The imagination and feeling" 
which illumined and vitalized his preaching, have never 
disturbed the sanity or lucidity of his utterances. "Pre- 
cision of thought" has been his unfailing characteristic. 
He has been not misimderstood by the men of his own 
generation or by the successive generations of students 
who have been drawn to his ministry. And in the larger 
religious world, I know of few who would be recognized as 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 117 

entitled to an equal place among men of so-called "light 
and leading." No name is more closely identified with the 
very critical and highly constructive work of ecclesiastical 
unity than the name of Newman Smyth. 

Apparently the decision of the Visitors, in spite of its 
injustice to Dr. Smyth, was in the interest of theological 
freedom, but it did not make that impression. There 
were two reasons why it produced a contrary effect. One 
was the very general distrust of its consistency if not of 
its sincerity, a distrust which it is but fair to say was 
justified by a subsequent decision condemning a professor 
for holding the same theological views which they had 
admitted to be in harmony with the Creed. (Exception 
should be made to this criticism in behalf of President 
Seelye.) The other reason was the fact that while the de- 
cision seemed to settle for the time the question of theo- 
logical freedom, it opened the question of institutional 
freedom. For the first time in the history of the Institution, 
the Trustees were confronted by the liability attending 
the acceptance of the visitorial system. They were con- 
fronted by the system in what seemed to them to be the 
most arbitrary and capricious exercise of its power. More- 
over, it was a keen disappointment to those who had come 
to know Dr. Smyth personally, and to see what manner 
of man he was as disclosed by his bearing under the trying 
circumstances in which he had been placed, that the Sem- 
inary was to be deprived of his services. The Trustees 
were thoroughly aroused by the decision, and at once 
began to take measures looking to the establishment of a 
new chair — of Apologetics or of Comparative Theology 
as might be most agreeable to Dr. Smyth — to be free, 
after the precedent of the Stone Professorship, from the 



ii8 MY GENERATION 

jurisdiction of the Visitors. It was well understood that, 
although the exemption of the Stone Professorship had 
been passed by without remonstrance, the establishment 
of the proposed chair would be legally contested by the 
Visitors. But the Trustees, as I have said, were fully 
aroused and were prepared to defend the legality of their 
action. One of the legal members of the Board went so far 
as to call in question the full authority assumed by the 
Visitors over the use of the Abbot Chair of Christian 
Theology, affirming in a telegram to Dr. Smyth, *' Visitors 
are not final judges of founders' intent and scope of Abbot 
Chair, and have not veto power over assignment of duties 
of that Chair by Trustees." The Trustees unanimously, 
with an exception before noted, asked Dr. Smyth to accept 
an election to the chair in question, its name and function 
to be determined by him, and the Faculty urgently sec- 
onded their request. As the correspondence of the time 
shows. Dr. Smyth took the matter into careful and sym- 
pathetic consideration, but felt compelled to decline the 
proposal. To him the controversy had had such theological 
significance that he feared the effect if it should be given 
at once a legal bearing. That might come later, but the 
defenders of theological freedom should not be the ones 
to give it that aspect, as would be the case if the right to 
establish a chair outside the jurisdiction of the Visitors 
should be tested in the courts. The question should be held, 
in his judgment, definitely and persistently to the theo- 
logical issue, and if it should be necessary, fought out in 
such a way as to make it tell most impressively for theo- 
logical freedom. Such was his judgment at the time, and 
such is still his opinion as he has taken note of the effect 
of his decision. In a recent letter he writes: "As I look 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 119 

back, I wonder whether my decision then not to accept 
what the Trustees so vaHantly urged, did not providen- 
tially result in presenting the issue in its full significance 
and on better lines than would have been possible, if it had 
turned simply on my occupying a chair then. I hope you 
may be able to make some detailed account of the whole 
matter, , . . The younger men hardly know how their 
liberty was won for them by the Andover controversy." 
I am not disposed to question the wisdom of Dr. Smyth's 
decision or the justice of his present opinion. I certainly 
agree with him in thinking that the result actually achieved 
was greater than could have been gained by the simple 
acceptance on his part of a chair created for him by the 
Trustees. Much more would have been necessary on their 
part — at least nothing less than such a reorganization of 
the Seminary as would have allowed them to make this 
new foundation the beginning of an enlarged and free 
institution through the restriction, or very clear sub- 
ordination, of the Board of Visitors. This was what I had 
in mind when I joined with my colleagues in urging upon 
Dr. Smyth his acceptance of the proposal of the Trustees. 
Possibly the result even then, had the larger scheme been 
successfully carried out, would have been no more im- 
pressive. To form any comparative judgment as to the 
relative value of the two possible results, it is necessary to 
call in the experience of another seminary placed at about 
the same time in similar circumstances. The two semi- 
naries which bore the brunt of the battle a generation ago 
for theological freedom were Andover and Union. Each 
won a notable victory, but Union did not stop short till it 
had gained institutional as well as immediate theological 
freedom. It finally set itself free from all "visitatorial" 



120 MY GENERATION 

control. As a result I think it is evident that Union is to- 
day more secure than Andover in its theological freedom, 
and better equipped in its unencumbered strength for the 
opportunities and exigencies of the modern theological 
world. 

The inconclusiveness of the decision of the Visitors 
created a state of uncertainty in the public mind, regarding 
the immediate future of the Seminary, but no confusion 
in the minds of the Trustees and Faculty. It seemed rather 
to unify them, and to give definite shape to their plans. 
The unexpected and uncalled-for prominence which had 
been given to the theory of a possible future probation for 
those who had not had a Christian opportunity in this life, 
was not allowed to force the theory out of right proportion 
in the general scheme of Christian doctrine. On the one 
hand, it was fully understood that the question which had 
been raised by its introduction was yet to be settled. It 
was not to be set aside, or held in diplomatic abeyance. 
On the other hand, it was determined that it should not 
be forced to a premature settlement. It was not to be 
made a shibboleth in the further effort to fill the Abbot 
Chair of Christian Theology. What was to be sought in a 
candidate for that chair was not a ready-made opinion on 
the subject which had been so recently in controversy, but 
rather, apart from the requisite professional qualification, 
those personal qualities which would demand full liberty 
of investigation and insure a candid judgment. The special 
qualities sought for in this emergency were open-minded- 
ness, candor, courage, breadth of view, and intellectual 
and moral sympathy with the aims of progressive theology. 
It is doubtful if these qualities could have been more 
perfectly exemplified than in Dr. George Harris, who was 



♦I 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 121 

now elected to the chair. When questioned by the Visitors 
regarding the theory of a future probation, he repHed 
with characteristic frankness that "he had not reached a 
definite opinion," but that he wished "to emphasize the 
hberty not only of clergymen, but of those who might take 
the Creed to hold the opinion." The Visitors took no ex- 
ception to this statement. 

There was an untimely, and in every way regrettable, 
but still unavoidable, sequel to the agitation attending 
the rejection of Dr. Smyth. I refer to the resignation of 
Professors Thayer and Mead in protest against certain 
requirements in the subscription to the Andover Creed. 
Their resignation was in no sense a logical result or a 
necessary consequence of Dr. Smyth's rejection. Neither 
of the professors had the slightest sympathy with the 
action of the Visitors. But that action had naturally 
brought into public discussion the whole subject of creed 
subscription, and in particular the terms of subscription 
to the Andover Creed. Both of the professors, especially 
Professor Thayer, were men of a high sense of personal 
liberty. They had been for some time restive under the 
general requirement of subscription, but the special re- 
quirement which occasioned their protest was that sub- 
scription should be repeated once in five years. As the 
time for the renewal of their subscription approached, 
they naturally became more sensitive to the requirement 
in view of existing circumstances, and asked the Trustees 
to relieve them of the obligation. They argued that as 
they had once subscribed, and no exception had been 
taken by the Visitors to their holding of the Creed or 
to their teaching, the required renewal was not only 
superfluous, but in a degree humiliating. The demand 



122 MY GENERATION 

implied distrust or suspicion of the Faculty, in place of 
that full and unquestioning confidence which ought to be 
given to men who had proved their loyalty. It tended to 
confirm the popular impression of literal and slavish sub- 
scription. Their contention was not unreasonable, but as 
I have indicated, it was untimely. It was at least out of 
harmony with the theory and practice of the Faculty and 
with the position which they were seeking to defend. 
Their position in regard to creed subscription was that 
the requirement of subscription carried with it the right 
of interpretation. No man was to be required to take the 
Seminary Creed literally, not even the Visitors, who, 
though charged with the duty of seeing that it remained 
unaltered, were equally entrusted with the duty of in- 
terpreting it. As in the case of the Justices of the Supreme 
Court, who might be strict or free constructionists of the 
Constitution, so the Visitors might interpret the Creed 
strictly or freely. The right of interpretation granted, the 
stated renewal of one's subscription, whether Visitor, 
Trustee, or Professor, was a matter of secondary impor- 
tance. Each renewal might furnish the occasion for re- 
statement of the meaning of the Creed (at any particular 
point) to the subscriber. 

This theory of creed subscription, supported by the 
right of liberal interpretation, was the theory entertained 
by the Faculty, as something to be held and defended by 
them in their own name and by their own right. The di- 
vergence of their colleagues. Professors Thayer and Mead, 
was to the effect that this right of liberal interpretation 
should be guaranteed and publicly announced by the 
Boards of control. In his speech at the anniversary dinner 
of the Seminary following his resignation. Professor Thayer 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 123 

said: "I should not be worthy to stay here, if, holding the 
views I do respecting the intended stringency of that 
document, and confirmed as I am in these views by the 
reiterated and persistent reluctance of these olBBcial boards 
of trust, publicly and officially under their signature, to 
formulate and promulgate the larger liberty which, in 
after-dinner speeches, they seem glad to encourage, I did 
not go." 

The contention of the Faculty for personal liberty of 
interpretation was not free from criticism. It called out 
the sarcasm that it meant "taking a creed in block and 
rejecting it in detail." To the nautical figure of Judge 
Russell, a former Visitor, that "no ship was ever so closely 
anchored that it was not free to feel the rise and fall of 
the tide," Professor Thayer was able to make fairly the 
neat rejoinder : "this means that while the Creed remains 
fixed like the anchor down in the mud, those made fast to 
it can move about pretty much as they please provided 
they carry cable enough to pay out." But the contention 
of the Faculty was none the less the only reasonable de- 
fense of creed subscription. The insistence upon personal 
liberty of interpretation rather than upon the demand for 
delegated liberty through governing boards, was of the 
very essence of theological and institutional freedom. As 
will appear later, it was the contention with which the 
accused professors faced their accusers at the "Trial," 
and which changed the whole situation from that of per- 
sonal defense to an aggressive defense of the Andover 
Creed and of creed subscription. 

Coincident with the election of Dr. Harris to the Abbot 
Chair of Christian Theology, the Trustees established, 
under endowments which had already been accepted ac- 



124 MY GENERATION 

cording to the "Associate" agreement, the two chairs of 
Biblical Theology and of Biblical History and Archaeology, 
each of great value in the existing state of Biblical criti- 
cism and of archaeological research. The former chair was 
filled by the election of Dr. Edward Y. Hincks, and the 
latter by the election of Dr. John P. Taylor. To the chairs 
of Sacred Literature (Old and New Testaments), vacated 
by Professors Mead and Thayer, the Trustees called two 
recent Fellows of Union Theological Seminary, George 
Foot Moore, now Frothingham Professor of the History of 
Religion at Harvard, and Frank E. Woodruff, who after 
four years at Andover became Professor of Greek at 
Bowdoin. He was succeeded by Professor Ryder, who 
remained in full service until his death in 1918. The 
members of the Faculty already in service were Egbert 
C. Smyth, Brown Professor of Ecclesiastical History and 
President of the Faculty, elected in 1863; John Wesley 
Churchill, Jones Professor of Elocution, elected in 1869; 
John P. Gulliver, Stone Professor of Relations of Chris- 
tianity and Science, elected in 1879; and William Jewett 
Tucker, Bartlet Professor of Sacred Rhetoric, elected in 
1880. The Faculty as thus reconstituted remained un- 
changed throughout the period of the controversy. 

The oflBcial status of the Seminary at the close of this 
preliminary stage in the controversy and reorganization, 
as represented by the Board of Trustees, may be briefly 
summarized as follows. Having been obliged to give over 
the plan of establishing a chair outside the visitorial system 
for the occupancy of Dr. Smyth, which plan would have 
allowed other free chairs, or involved a lawsuit for the 
restoration of original rights, the Trustees adopted the 
policy, now known as that of "watchful waiting," looking 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 125 

to the one immediate purpose of giving to the professors 
and to the public the assurance of theological freedom. 
Assuming that the Visitors were sincere in their "con- 
viction that the theological views of Dr. Smyth were in 
general harmony with those which had been identified 
with the history of the Andover Seminary from the be- 
ginning, " and assuming that they were sincere in con- 
ceding to Dr. Harris full liberty to sign the Creed, while 
holding the right to accept the "theory of a probation 
after this life for those who do not have the gospel," they 
proceeded to the discharge of their duties in the further 
development of the Seminary, and awaited results. 

II 

The Andover Movement and the Religious Public 

It was two years from the resignation of Professor Park 
to the inauguration of the successors of Professors Thayer 
and Mead. One of the most intelligent and well informed 
of the religious journals of the time was in the habit of 
referring to the agitation, which was carried on meanwhile, 
as the "Andover Disturbance." It had not yet become 
the "Andover Controversy." The distinction was well 
taken. The agitation during this period was characterized 
by lack of dignity and of seriousness. The point of attack 
on the management of the Seminary had been chosen with 
a view to popular effect. The attack necessarily took the 
fortune of this choice. The reaction came in the form of 
response most pleasing to the popular mind. "Second 
probation" was a term on which the most solemn changes 
could be rung; it was also a term which easily lent itself 
to sarcastic and facetious gibes. Another term of dis- 
paragement, the "new departure," became in the hands 



126 MY GENERATION 

of the theological wags, as applied to the future state, the 
"new aperture." The general subject furnished a con- 
stantly recurring theme for the Boston Monday Lecture- 
ship under the ingenious and often startling treatment 
of Joseph Cook. It was a subject which enjoyed in about 
equal proportion the hospitality of the religious and the 
secular press. 

This early stage of agitation was no time for an un- 
prejudiced or thoughtful hearing for the underlying truth 
in question. It was a time for restraint on the part of the 
Faculty. To have been drawn into premature discussion 
would have contributed only to the confusion of the hour. 
In due time the "Review," already in plan, would take 
up the subject with becoming sincerity, and with a due 
sense of proportion, and bring it into proper alignment with 
related subjects in the field of theological progress. What 
was timely and in every way desirable was some attempt 
to change the tone of popular discussion. The one grievous 
lack was seriousness. Definition and argument would 
come later. 

It was in the sense of this pressing need that I accepted 
an invitation, given to me presumably as a representative 
of Andover, to preach the annual sermon at the meeting 
of the General Association of the Congregational Churches 
of Massachusetts at Fitchburg, June 25, 1882. In this 
sermon, I determined to avoid any premature discussion 
of "second probation"; to show rather the reason and 
scope of the Andover movement, and above all to make 
some definite impression of its seriousness. The sermon 
was based on the exhortation of the writer of the Epistle 
to the Hebrews (chap, xii: 28, 29) to his Jewish brethren 
so far to enlarge their Judaism as to allow them "to be- 



I 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 127 

lieve unto Christianity" — "an exhortation," I remarked, 
"which had its direct significance for every generation 
like our own called upon in the providence of God to 
enlarge the scope of its religious thinking, and to change 
in any essential respects its methods." After showing 
what I believed to be the occasion for this enlargement in 
the prevailing theological provincialism of New England, 
I dwelt upon the quahties necessary to effect it. "Courage 
and seriousness," I affirmed, were "the qualities necessary 
to a generation through which in the providence of God 
any change is to be wrought out in things touching re- 
ligion — courage to dare to let in the larger life and the 
larger truth, to open up, to break up, if need be, the formal 
for the incoming of the more spiritual; seriousness to see 
to it that every change is wrought as 'under the Great 
Taskmaster's eye,' to see to it that religion is held mean- 
while in the thoughts of men under the power of its eternal 
sanctions." The sermon evoked much comment, varying 
from earnest approval to questioning and condemnation. 
One very zealous clergyman wrote me a long letter deny- 
ing every exception which I had taken to the current 
habit of theological thought, and protesting against the 
publication of the sermon. I think, however, that the 
utterance then made cleared the air of superficialities and 
even frivolities, which had begun to mark the opposition 
in certain quarters to the "Andover Movement," and 
left distinct impression of its seriousness upon the minds 
alike of friends and of opponents. I am confirmed in this 
view of the nature of the impression produced, by the 
following extract from the "Chicago Advance" which 
has come to my notice since the above paragraph was 
written : 



128 MY GENERATION 

At evening Professor W. J. Tucker delivered a remarkable 
sermon at the Rollstone Church to an audience that at times 
seemed literally breathless. His text was Heb. xii: 28, 29. He 
began with a bold defense of courage as necessary to Christian 
thinking, and a solemn assertion of seriousness, as equally es- 
sential. After a clear, strong statement of the spiritual and 
intuitional, as opposed to the mechanical and objective in 
theology, and after dwelling upon the spirit of our age as deeply 
conscious of God, he spoke of theories of the future state. The 
sermon will be printed. It deserves and will receive careful read- 
ing. Some thought it a "new Andover platform"; others, that 
it marked an epoch in New England theology. Others called it 
mystical, and a few were utterly dissatisfied with it as an at- 
tempted but inadequate defense of Andover. 

The Andover movement was more than the Andover 
controversy. It was wider and deeper. The controversy 
was incidental to the movement, though a large and neces- 
sary incident as it proved to be. It was to become in time 
a fight for theological freedom. The movement preceding 
and permeating the controversy was a part of the general 
movement for the enlargement of faith. But if the fight 
had been declined, it would have withdrawn Andover from 
the movement. It was diflBcult to make this fact plain to 
some of our loyal supporters and friends. They did not 
altogether like the issue which had been forced upon us. 
They positively disliked the label of "second probation," 
overlooking the fact that the attempt to fasten an un- 
popular term upon a rising cause is a pretty sure sign of 
the recognition of its vitality and strength. It was, how- 
ever, none the less desirable to keep the movement plainly 
before the public mind, to see to it that it was understood 
in its true proportions, and above all that it was appre- 
hended in its motive and spirit. 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 129 

For the carrying-out of this last object, namely, that of 
spiritual impression, very much depended upon the per- 
sonal service in the churches rendered by the men from 
Andover, both Faculty and students. Fortunately the 
Faculty at the time was to a considerable extent a preach- 
ing faculty. Some of the professors were fresh from the 
pastorate. The suspicion which had been awakened against 
Andover did not debar the professors from the pulpits of 
the influential churches. As a rule the New England pulpit 
was open, and the churches hospitable and receptive. Of 
course it would have been a breach of hospitality to have 
carried the controversy into the pulpit, or to have used 
the pulpit in any way as a medium for propaganda. What 
was fitting, what was expected, what was desired was the 
presentation of truth in the spirit of the larger faith and 
the larger hope. The essential question in the minds of 
those who listened to the Andover preachers was, what is 
the spiritual effect of their faith and hope upon them,? Do 
they come nearer to reality, are they more vital, can they 
reach the deeper depths of the heart? I recall no unnatural- 
ness in the relation between the preacher and his various 
audiences, no consciousness of the representative above 
the personal in preaching. On the contrary, preaching was 
quite as natural to me, and in some respects more stimulat- 
ing than in the pastorate. I had feared that the tendency 
would be to pass insensibly from the preacher to the ser- 
monizer. The actual effect was to intensify preaching. 
There was little interruption in this work of the pulpit. I 
find in referring to my record that there was hardly a 
Sunday spent at home, except during the month of the 
supply of the Andover Chapel, as each one of us took his 
turn in the supply. For the most part my engagements 



130 MY GENERATION 

covered a succession of Sundays — at the Old South, 
Boston, for six months preceding the coming of Dr. 
Gordon; for an equal time at Berkeley Temple before the 
coming of Dr. Dickinson, when it was taking shape as an 
institutional church; for very considerable periods at the 
State Street Church, Portland, the South Church, Salem, 
the Kirk Street Church, Lowell, the Central Church, 
Boston, the Central Church, Providence, the United 
Church, New Haven; and frequent preaching, but not in 
succession, in the various college pulpits. 

This was very strenuous work, but as I have said, it 
was stimulating and in many ways helpful. The field be- 
came a spiritual and social laboratory. I returned to my 
classroom not only quickened in spirit, but informed at 
certain points in regard to the social, industrial, and 
economic problems which faced the New England churches 
in the cities and manufacturing towns, and with which 
the Andover movement had a practical concern. That 
was to be one form of its application of "theology to life." 
As I have intimated in an earlier chapter, the humanistic 
phase of theological development had to do with human 
conditions in this life, as well as with human destiny. Re- 
ligious effort in the cities among the people in the segre- 
gated neighborhood had taken the form of the mission. 
Some very satisfactory results had attended this form of 
religious effort, but undesignedly and for the most part 
quite unconsciously, it was leading toward that process 
of social segregation which was fast becoming the acute 
problem of city life. Increasing familiarity with the 
churches gave me the opportunity not only of investigat- 
ing this problem at first hand, but also of consultation 
with the most active and intelligent laymen. The results 



I 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 131 

of these investigations and conferences were to appear in 
connection with courses of lectures at Andover on social 
economics, and in the founding of the Andover House, 
now the South End House, in Boston. 

The relation of the Andover movement to Unitarianism 
was naturally a matter of interest in New England. It 
never became a matter of denominational discussion. The 
Unitarians laid no claim to the movement, and no serious 
charges of Unitarian tendencies were brought by the 
champions of the old-time orthodoxy. On the part of those 
most directly opposed to Andover, the obsession of "second 
probation " was so great, that while it lasted it limited 
the area of theological vision. When formal charges were 
brought against the professors, there was little zest in any 
specifications bearing on other doctrinal points, except 
in a certain way upon the doctrine of sacred Scripture. 
There was, however, as I have said, a very genuine interest 
on the part of many Unitarians to know the attitude of 
Andover toward their body, as well as to know how the 
"new" orthodoxy differed from the "old." An occasion, 
the annual festival of the Unitarian Club of Boston, which 
was meant primarily to bring out the difference between 
the new orthodoxy and the old, became unexpectedly the 
occasion for bringing out quite distinctly the essential line 
of cleavage between the new orthodoxy and Unitarianism. 
Dr. Lyman Abbott, Dr. Gordon, and myself had been in- 
vited to speak as representatives of the new orthodoxy. Dr. 
Abbott made the opening address. He gave a very clear and 
comprehensive exposition of the Puritan theology as based 
upon the conception of the Sovereignty of God, and ap- 
plied this inherited theology to both the old and the new 
orthodoxy. Toward the close of his address, he gave at 



132 MY GENERATION 

some length his personal conception of the divinity of 
Christ as inherent in his humanity, because the divine and 
the human are one in essence. To this utterance both Dr. 
Gordon and myself, as expressing the faith of the new- 
orthodoxy, took exception; so that from this point on, the 
discussion turned from the distinction between the old 
and the new orthodoxy to the distinction at the most vital 
point between the new orthodoxy and Unitarianism. I 
give a brief extract from my speech following Dr. Abbott's, 
and also from the speech of Dr. Gordon who followed me: 

I had not expected to speak directly on the subject that has 
been introduced here to-night with so much reverence and ten- 
derness; namely, the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. I think 
that I should agree with very much that Dr. Abbott has said 
throughout his address. I think there is a sense in which I 
should not agree with what he has said at this point. We are 
like God; there are a great many things which are the same to 
us and to Him. "Which thing is true in Him," said the Apostle 
John, "and in you." But there is a difference. We are not God. 
Somewhere there is a line between man and God; and my ques- 
tion is this, Did Jesus Christ cross that line from below or did 
he cross it from above.'* When I try to answer that question, I 
note this. It is to me a startling peculiarity in the life of Jesus 
Christ that he was not a seeker after God, that he was singularly 
destitute of aspiration. The greatest soul in humanity manifests 
its greatness by searching and reaching out toward God. Jesus 
Christ calmly says, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father" ; 
"Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I 
will give you rest." There must have been a sublime conscious- 
ness, an infinite repose of knowledge, a conception that he 
knew God at the very heart, that enabled him to say, as he 
came among men, " ' I am come that they might have life, and 
that they might have it abundantly' — I want nothing myself: 
I have all — I am the life, and it is all for man." I stand in awe 
before that marvelous representation. I know not what that 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 133 

life is unless it be the life of God. I can find nothing above it. 
It reaches into the heart of the Eternal. 

Dr. Gordon who followed me said at this point: 

I accept the Nicene Creed as the most magnificent symbol of 
Godhead that has yet come into Christianity. That, I under- 
stand, differentiates me from my Unitarian brother, whom I 
respect from my heart, and whose character may be beyond 
mine, whose services to the community I may be profoundly 
thankful for. But as I have said, those who accept in any true 
sense the Nicene Creed are in their fundamental doctrine of 
God, and inferentially in their Christology, opposed to and not 
at one with those who reject that creed. . . . My profound 
conviction, which I dare to utter here to-night because you have 
honored me by asking me to do it, is that it is absolutely im- 
possible, if I believe in the integrity of the records which give 
His life, for me to classify Jesus as simply a man. He is un- 
classified to me. There is a uniqueness in Him which cannot 
come under the mere category of man. When you have asked 
me to tell you what that uniqueness is, you simply step beyond 
the legitimate power of question; for I have already said knowl- 
edge is simply classification, and I have no class under which 
He can be brought, I end simply on the line of thought which 
differentiates, in my judgment, on this momentous question, the 
New Orthodoxy from the Old, and the New Orthodoxy from 
the Unitarian body, whose history and character and manhood 
we are all proud of, we are all grateful for. 

I was very much gratified, as showing how genuine the 
interest was in the modern orthodox view of the person 
of Christ, to receive after the meeting a letter from Mr. 
Arthur T. Lyman, President of the Unitarian Club, from 
which I make the following extract: 

I should esteem it a great favor and privilege if at the April 
meeting of the Unitarian Club (Wednesday, April 13th) you 
would state much more fully than when Dr. Abbott spoke, your 



134 MY GENERATION 

views of the person of Christ. We have had Professor Everett 
who stated one view of the matter plainly, and Dr. Abbott who 
at the Club and at the Lowell Institute, has stated his view 
with all the clearness perhaps that it is capable of. I take it that 
the view of Dr. Abbott cannot be considered to be the general 
one even of scholars of the orthodox Congregational body. I 
suppose that Andover does represent the modern scholarly 
belief of the orthodox Congregationalists, and I wish that we 
could hear their view fully and distinctly stated. As nearly all 
of our churches grew from the orthodox Congregational root, 
we naturally and in fact feel a greater interest in that body of 
Christians than in any other. 

It was with sincere regret that I was obliged to decline 
this generous invitation, but I found much satisfaction in 
personal conversation on the subject with Mr. Lyman, 
whom I came to know with some intimacy and with a 
constantly increasing esteem, through rather frequent 
preaching at King's Chapel, where Mr. Lyman was Chair- 
man of the Church Committee. King's Chapel held so 
unique a place in his judgment in the Unitarian body, 
that it was with diflSculty that I could persuade him 
that a man of my views of the person of Christ could not 
consistently allow himself to entertain the thought of 
considering the pastorate of that church. 

Had I been able to accept Mr. Lyman's invitation to 
discuss at length before the Unitarian Club my conception 
of the person of Christ, I should have based my reasoning 
on the distinction drawn by the editor of the "Christian 
Register" between the orthodox and the Unitarian method 
of approach to the subject; that whereas "Orthodoxy even 
in its newest phase approaches the problem of (His) exist- 
ence from the side of God, modern Unitarianism is dis- 
posed to look first at the known and near facts; it studies 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 135 

man; its aims and hopes are to search God through man." 
I should have accepted that distinction as fundamental, 
involving a radical difiFerence of view respecting the Scrip- 
tures. To my mind the person of Christ represents God 
revealed, not God attained. There is great significance to 
me in the saying of Lacordaire — "Jesus Christ is the 
greatest spiritual phenomenon ever naturalized in this 
world." I have elsewhere brought out my conception of 
the person of Christ in two monographs — one entitled 
"Life in Himself, a Meditation on the Consciousness of 
Jesus," preached as a Christmas sermon (1891) in the First 
Church, Cambridge, repeated in Andover Chapel the 
following month, and published as an article in the "An- 
dover Review" for February, 1892; the other, entitled 
"The Satisfaction of Humanity in Jesus Christ," an 
editorial in a series on "The Divinity of Christ" in the 
"Andover Review" (January, 1893), forming the last 
chapter in the book under that title. 

As the controversial situation developed, there was 
special need of an authorized and adequate organ of 
communication with the religious public, one that should 
afford some security against misrepresentation, one that 
should enable the Seminary to fulfill its part in the theo- 
logical advancement of the time. Some of our supporters 
strongly advocated the establishment of a religious news- 
paper, but this project seemed to us to be inadequate, and 
in other respects unsuitable. It was fraught with unpleas- 
ant Habihties. As one of our most sagacious graduates, Pro- 
fessor Palmer, of Harvard, wrote us, with a wit savoring 
of wisdom, "A religious newspaper is not necessarily 
wicked, but it is quite likely to be such in fact." The pub- 
lication to emanate from a Seminary, according to tradi- 



136 MY GENERATION 

tion and fitness, was a Review, but in our ease it should 
be a Monthly, not the conventional Quarterly. The way 
had been prepared for such a publication, without local 
rivalry or controversy, by the transfer of the "Ribliotheca 
Sacra," for nearly forty years under the editorial direction 
of Professor Park, to the associate editor. Dr. George F. 
Wright, and the removal to Oberlin where Dr. Wright 
was Professor of New Testament Literature. At the close 
of 1883, the following prospectus of the "Andover Review" 
was put out stating its purpose and method: 

The publication of a new Religious and Theological Review 
with this title, will be commenced in December of the present 
year. While it will appeal to professional readers, it will address 
itself directly to the religious public. 

The Review will advocate the principles and represent the 
method and spirit of progressive Orthodoxy. Accepting the 
distinction between theology and practical religion, the Editors 
will seek to utilize the gains to theology from the accredited 
results of scholarship in Biblical and historical criticism; and 
also to show the obligations of theology to the social and re- 
ligious life of the time. The object of the Review will not be 
controversy, nor mere speculation. The editors hope to make 
it a positive and constructive force in the sphere of opinion 
and belief. Recognizing, however, the fact that no age can hon- 
orably refuse to face the more serious problems which confront 
it, there will be no hesitancy in candidly investigating and dis- 
cussing the vital questions of the present. The Andover Re- 
view finds a reason for its establishment in the number and 
urgency of these questions. 

The Andover Review will be under the editorial control of 
Egbert C. Smyth J. W. Churchill 

William J. Tucker George Harris 

Edward Y. Hincks 
Professors in Andover Theological Seminary, Andover, Mass., 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 137 

with the cooperation and active support of their colleagues in 
the Faculty — Professors John P. Gulliver, John P. Taylor, 
George F. Moore, and Frank E. Woodruff. 

The Andover Review will be published monthly at $3.00 
a year; single copy, 30 cents. 

Houghton, Mifflin and Company 
4 Park Street, Boston, Mass. 

As the prospectus indicates, the "Review" was not 
issued under the management or the direct sanction of 
the Trustees, nor was the whole Faculty to be equally 
responsible. The five named as editors assumed directly 
the editorial, and indirectly the financial responsibility, 
but their colleagues cooperated with them steadily and 
heartily. Of special value were the contributions of Pro- 
fessor Moore, covering a wide range of critical scholarship, 
and the Archaeological Notes of Professor Taylor. I men- 
tion also a co-worker whose name does not appear on the 
cover, but often within, — Professor C. C. Starbuck, — 
not formally connected with the Seminary, but a scholar 
of such erudition, and a man of such wide and ready in- 
formation, that as I look back upon some of our editorial 
emergencies, I doubt if we could have escaped without 
his ever ready and always sufficient aid. His range as an 
authority on religious subjects ran from the more intricate 
workings of the Roman propaganda, to the remotest oper- 
ations of the foreign missionary boards. 

Among the contributors then and soon often announced, 
who were really identified with the "Review" as its sup- 
porters, were very many representative scholars and 
writers of the liberal type of theology. The "Review" 
served to call out and in a sense to organize the advocates 
of theological freedom and progress within the so-called 



138 MY GENERATION 

orthodox bodies. A curious incident, showing the unre- 
liability of early associations in determining new align- 
ments, came up in connection with a question of Mr. 
Houghton (Houghton, Mifflin & Company) about our list 
of contributors. "Would you accept articles," he said, 
"from such men as James Freeman Clarke and William 
G. T. Shedd?" Noticing our surprise at this collocation of 
names, he reminded us that he and Dr. Shedd were class- 
mates at the University of Vermont under President 
Marsh, the most pronounced disciple of Coleridge in this 
country. Both of them imbibed the philosophical teach- 
ings of the classroom. To the mind of Mr. Houghton that 
fact ought to have fixed the theological position of his 
classmate in current discussions — a wide miscalculation. 

The Andover Review Company, Incorporated, in- 
cluded a considerable number of prominent laymen in 
New England, among whom were Rowland Hazard, 
Alpheus Hardy, Samuel Johnson, S. D. Warren, Horace 
Fairbanks, John N. Denison, F. W. Carpenter, A. D. 
Lockwood, W. W. Brown, S. R. Payson, S. L. Ward, 
Henry Woods, Edward A. Strong. 

We were much indebted to our publishers, not only for 
the guarantee which their name gave to the general char- 
acter and quality of the "Review," but also for their 
personal interest in the venture. It was a gratification to 
us, for their sakes as well as for our own, that they were 
soon able to make the following announcement regarding 
its reception: 

The Andover Review is the recognized representative, 
among the reviews, of progress in the advocacy of the Christian 
faith. Its contributors and readers are from the growing con- 
stituency of clergymen and laymen in the various denominations, 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 



139 



who believe that the safety of the Church and its power He in 
the resolute advancement of Christian doctrine in its broadest 
application to the problems of society. The Review is open 
to the discussion of all subjects of social, educational, and lit- 
erary importance, which are germane to the moral and religious 
life of the people. As an evidence of the scope and interest of its 
articles, it may be stated that The Review is taken in 250 
College and Public Libraries throughout the country. 

Notices from the press followed from time to time, of 
which examples are given in the accompanying footnote.^ 

The distinguishing feature of the "Review" as a re- 
ligious and theological magazine was its use of the editorial. 
In this respect it was an innovation upon existing usage. 

1 The Andover Review comes near to being an ideal religious magazine We 
know of no other similar publication that more faithfully represents the dom- 
inant convictions of the great masses of Christian people concerning the life, 
duty, and conduct of practical religion. — The Churchman (New York). 

There is no abler or more discriminating publication than the Andover Review. 
There is none which the wide-awake minister can so little afford to be without, 
and whoever, minister or layman, is long conversant with this monthly must 
become an intelligent and progressive Christian. — Zions Herald (Boston) . 

The Andover Review more than fulfills its high promise. Liberal and progressive 
in its tone, religious questions of vital interest are discussed in a thoughtful 
spirit by some of the ablest writers of the time. — The Week (Toronto). 

In these days when a coarse and blatant infidelity is too often opposed by 
nothing stronger than a weak religionism, it is refreshing to read a religious 
periodical like the Andover Review. It is at once a manly organ of essential or- 
thodoxy, and an honest exponent of the legitimate conclusions of modern re- 
ligious thought. . . . The editorial articles of the Review are admirable. — New 
York Tribune. 

The editorials in the Andover Review are an important feature. Written 
mostly by the professors at Andover, they touch the nerve of the religious con- 
sciousness of our time. — Boston Herald. 

One of the foremost of American religious magazines. The Review is con- 
ducted with conspicuous ability, and numbers among its contributors many of 
the most eminent thinkers of the day. — Charleston News and Courier. 

It is almost necessary for any paper that tries to keep apace with advanced 
thought as well as with the occurrences of the time to draw fully on the inspira- 
tion in the Andover Review. — Editor of a leading daily paper. 

It has been the means of furnishing more inspiration, higher ideals, a more 
determined purpose in the work of the ministry, than almost anything else 
which has been published. — A New England Pastor. 



140 MY GENERATION 

But a Review consisting exclusively of contributed articles, 
however valuable in themselves, could not give that direct 
and intimate contact with the religious public which the 
circumstances demanded. The editorial was capable of a 
directive force impossible in any collection of articles. And 
as embodying in a more distinct and continuous way the 
personal element, it invited a sympathetic reading. Of 
course there was danger in the exercise of editorial freedom. 
It was obviated in part, in the present case, by the fact 
that the editorial utterance was that of a group rather 
than that of an individual. Still there were liabilities. One 
day, during the trial of the accused professors, a very 
stanch friend of the Seminary said to me in good-humored 
impatience, "The trouble has all come out of your con- 
founded editorials." "Perhaps so," I rephed, "but have 
you thought that it is much more likely that the out- 
spokenness of the 'Review' prevented an inquisition in 
the classroom?" 

As the event proved, the use made of the editorial was 
justified by two distinct advantages which it conferred. 
First, it enabled the "Review" to carry out a definite 
and consistent purpose as an interpreter of progressive 
orthodoxy. Not all the advocates of theological progress 
emphasized the same points. It fell to the lot of Andover 
to emphasize the need of a restatement of the distinctive 
Christian truths in the more enlarged terms of Chris- 
tianity. The attack upon Andover was in reality a chal- 
lenge to this task. The particular question which had been 
forced upon the Seminary was not to be evaded when 
once the conditions were ripe for its discussion. 

The opening words of the first issue of the "Review," 
in the introductory article by Professor Smyth, were a 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 



141 



quotation from one of the greatest of the early Christians 
— "Let us learn to live according to Christianity ... for 
Christianity did not believe into Judaism, but Judaism 
into Christianity, that every tongue which believes might 
be gathered together unto God." "These memorable 
words," said Professor Smyth, "define the theological as 
well as the ethical and practical purpose of this Review. 
They connect theology with life. They point out the 
path to unity of religious belief. They suggest the need 
and indicate the method of a Christian construction of 
Christian doctrine. Let us learn to think according to 
Christianity." In their endeavor to realize the theologi- 
cal significance of this sentiment in the conduct of the 
"Review," the editors laid down the postulate that "the 
true and ultimate test of all theological progress is its 
Christianization of its materials from whatever source they 
may be derived." All advance, that is, in Christian doctrine 
depends upon the willingness to recognize and the ability 
to use the advances in Christian knowledge. 

With reference to several of the topics to be considered by us 
[they say], it should be borne in mind that as distinct, specific 
and absorbing questions of theological discussion they belong 
to the modern era. . . . 

The c|uestion, What is the Bible.'' could not earlier be inves- 
tigated as in recent days, for lack, apart from other reasons, of 
the requisite critical apparatus. The doctrine of the Atonement 
even in so late a Confession as the Westminster — the last of 
the great historic creeds — is merged in the larger doctrine of 
Redemption. Many questions in eschatology, now rife, have 
never until recently received thorough consideration. The special 
inquiry as to the relation of Christ's Person, sacrifice, final 
judgment, to those who never hear the gospel in this life is be- 
coming more and more urgent and important, because it is the 
next and necessary one, now that the Atonement has become a 



142 MY GENERATION 

distinct and specific doctrine, and the interpretation has won 
general approval that it has an absolutely universal relation 
and intent. We claim in that portion of our work which will 
naturally attract the most criticism, to be pursuing the path 
opened by our predecessors in vindicating the now accepted 
truth that Christ's sacrifice on Calvary was for every man. It is 
a reasonable request that this connection and relation of what 
we have to say on eschatology should be kept in view, and that 
the conclusions reached should be tested by their harmony 
with the revelation given in and through the Incarnation. The 
ultimate question between conflicting opinions must be, Which 
most perfectly appropriates the grace and truth revealed in 
Christ.'* We do not decline the test of orthodoxy, but it is ob- 
vious that, with reference to inquiries which could not arise at 
an earlier stage of Christian knowledge or doctrinal develop- 
ment, and which have never been adjudicated upon ecclesiasti- 
cally because never fully opened for discussion, the question of 
orthodoxy happily merges in the more profitable question of truth. 

In due time the subjects in Christian doctrine here re- 
ferred to were taken up editorially in the "Review." The 
editorials soon reappeared as chapters in the book entitled 
"Progressive Orthodoxy," and were made the basis of 
charges in the heresy trial which followed. As showing 
how fully the idea of unity and consistency of treatment 
was realized, I append to the subjects which form the 
headings of the chapters the names of the writers: 

The Incarnation, Smyth. \\\ '^ 
The Atonement, Harris. |\ 5b 
Eschatology, Harris. 1^ j^^*) 
The Work of the Holy Spirit as related to 

the Historic Christ, Tucker. T-"^ 
The Christian, Tucker, y^^^ 
Christianity and Missions, Smyth. <3^ 
The Scriptures, Hincks. -i^v 
Christianity Absolute and Universal, Harris. *^ -^ 



i 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 143 

It may be a matter of interest to some to know, in view 
of the issue of the trial of the various writers before the 
Board of Visitors, that the specifications on which Pro- 
fessor Smyth was condemned and the others were ac- 
quitted, were mostly taken from the chapters written by 
the other professors. Of course the equal responsibility for 
the book was shared by all the writers, but the analysis 
given shows the grotesqueness as well as the injustice of 
the decision. 

A second series of theological editorials followed at a 
later stage, which was also put into a book under the title 
"The Divinity of Christ." In introducing this series, the 
editors say: 

Nearly eight years ago we found a similar practical call for an 
application of a great principle of Christianity, that of its uni- 
versality to various doctrinal and missionary problems of the 
day. The papers thus elicited were afterwards gathered together 
in a little volume entitled "Progressive Orthodoxy." In it the 
opinion was expressed that the question which "lies nearest the 
heart of all modern Christian thought and life is ... 'Is the Jesus 
whose life we know on its human side the Christ in whom re- 
ligious faith finds its appropriate and permanently satisfying 
object? '" And we added as expressive of our own conviction — 
"The Jesus of history is the Christ of faith; the Christ of faith 
is God revealed and knowTi." The chapters which follow will 
deal especially with the question thus proposed. 

Another use of the editorial, which proved to be of equal 
advantage, was that it enabled the "Review" to take an 
active and timely part in those phases of the controversy 
which were not under the restriction of the visitatorial or 
legal procedure. The formal attack upon the accused pro- 
fessors virtually brought the "case" down to the charge 
of violating their obligation to the Andover Creed. It left 



144 MY GENERATION 

the larger theological issues in the open, a matter of free 
discussion. It was however, given a new setting as it 
was appropriated and taken in charge by such advocates 
of foreign missions as held that the Andover theory had 
"cut the nerve of missions." The American Board, at that 
time a close corporation, was taken possession of and 
made the chief agency for continuing the theological 
attack upon Andover. It was a tactical mistake. It in- 
vited and aroused a vigorous counter-attack on the part 
of the whole liberal element in the denomination which 
supported the Board, whether it was affiliated with An- 
dover or not. It made the platform of the American Board 
the arena of a conflict, wider in its interests and more in- 
tense in its character than that which was then going on in 
the courts. In this conflict the "Review" could properly 
bear its part, and this it was able to do with continuous 
and cumulative effect through its editorial pages. The 
conditions were now reversed. The opposers of Andover 
were put upon the defensive. They had put themselves 
upon the defensive in the new responsibilities which they 
had assumed. The original dogma of "the universal per- 
dition of the heathen," which had been put forth as "the 
real basis of missions," had caused a growing revolt of 
the Christian conscience among the friends of missions. 
What relieving theory could be held which should at once 
justify and stimulate the work of missions? Andover had 
claimed "that the Christianity of the Bible points to a 
Christian opportunity for the race, that it lifts the race to 
the place of grace." It substituted hope for despair as the 
motive for missions. It aflarmed the justice of a true Chris- 
tian opportunity to every man before he should pass under 
the final judgment. To this definite and satisfying reliev- 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 145 

ing theory, it now became necessary that some reply 
should be made. It was no longer enough to deny it or 
denounce those who held it. What could take its place? 
The only relief actually ofiFered was such as might be found 
in the theory of "the essential Christ," a vague and 
shadowy doctrine lacking the force of reality, as it was in 
its nature destitute of the power of motive. Furthermore, 
the controversy was now carried on, not through dis- 
cussion alone, but through "cases," as young men and 
young women made application for missionary service 
under the Board, where careful note could be made of 
the questions to which they were subjected, outside and 
beyond the standards of the churches that they repre- 
sented, and where the grounds of their rejection, if for 
theological reasons, could be put before the religious 
public. And finally, the controversy reached the point 
where the Board was obliged to answer to its "relation 
to the churches — whether it was that of domination or 
of dependence." In such terms, the controversy ran month 
after month through the "Review," turning, if not away 
from Andover, yet into new channels and toward a new 
outlet — with what effect will appear in the concluding 
section of this chapter. 

To these advantages which the use of the editorial gave 
to the " Review " in the part taken by the editors in the 
controversy, I may fitly add the effect of editorial writing 
upon £he editors themselves. It gave a certain directness 
and naturalness to their professorial work. It was a cor- 
rective to any tendency to scholasticism. It had also a 
broadening effect in compelling a wider knowledge of 
current topics than merely professorial interest would 
require. The range of subjects which came under legiti- 



146 MY GENERATION 

mate, if not necessary, editorial treatment was large. It 
was impossible to have a narrow outlook upon the human 
aspects of religion, or to take a narrow view of the in- 
creasingly sensitive "contacts" of theology with life. 

There was a phase of the Andover editorship worthy of 
special recall in any autobiographical notes, namely the 
personal relations of the editors. The editorial work of the 
"Review" was in a peculiar sense team-work. It brought 
together men for a distinct, and as they believed for an 
imperative, task. But as it happened, they were men of 
congenial thought and temper, and as they became more 
committed to their work they became more devoted to 
one another. The intimacies of friendship grew with the 
increase of responsibilities. Each man kept his individual- 
ity, but all felt alike the educating effect of their asso- 
ciated work — the training away from mere scholasticism, 
the discipline of trying to connect theology with life, and 
perhaps more than all else the sympathetic sense of the 
relations and interrelations of religious truth. 

Professor Smyth, to whom I shall refer later as the out- 
standing figure of the group in the trial for heresy, was 
editor-in-chief, and for the most part the managing editor 
— a man of profound convictions, broad-minded, but 
capable of an intense single-mindedness in the pursuit of 
a given end; an honorable opponent, but dangerous be- 
cause so sure of his premises and supporting facts; a scholar 
without the affectations of learning; a man of morai fiber 
coupled with a rare tenderness of spirit; always sincere, 
at times ardent in expression. Though lacking somewhat 
in the "imaginative" quality of his brother Newman, his 
thought was imbued with a certain power of sentiment, 
which if not a substitute for the imaginative quaUty, gave 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 147 

a penetrating as well as carrying force to his utterances 
and writings. To those who knew him intimately, it was a 
pleasure to note how easily his mind found rest and sat- 
isfaction in his aesthetic sense, whether directed toward 
nature or religious art. 

Professor Harris was the most versatile of our group. 
Richly endowed with the philosophic temperament and 
well trained in the philosophic habit, he was always lucid 
and sane. But his range of observation was so wide, and 
his observations so quick and keen, that he was as in- 
valuable in the discussion of current questions of moral 
and religious import as in the treatment of theological 
topics. Moreover, his style was delightfully self-revealing. 
It photographed his mind in the free play of his action, 
catching the shades of humor which came and went with 
the ready flow of his thought. Many of the more general 
subjects of which the "Review" took note might have 
been assigned indiscriminately to either Professor Harris 
or to myself. As I have been looking over the editorials of 
this class and have been unable to identify the authorship 
of some one of them by subject, it has usually been easy 
to identify it by style. Whenever it has shown some pe- 
culiar incisiveness, some deftness of touch, some statement 
carrying its evidence on its very face, I have known that 
the editorial in question belonged to him rather than to 
me. The great characteristic of Professor Harris's contro- 
versial method was its unanswerable reasonableness. He 
never lost his poise. Controversy never jostled his mind. 
His mental machinery was never thrown out of gear. 
To argue against him was as if to argue against things 
fundamental — common sense, reason, and self-evident 
truth. 



148 MY GENERATION 

Professor Hincks was remarkably adapted to meet the 
unusual requirements of his department, Biblical Theol- 
ogy, and to give the right public exposition of them in the 
"Review." The work of Biblical Criticism required at that 
time a genuine combination in the Biblical critic of con- 
servatism and radicalism — of radicalism rather than of 
simple progressiveness, because it was not simply work 
in advance of what had gone before in the same general 
department, but relatively new work, work at the roots. 
Professor Hincks was both a conservative and a radical. 
His conservatism lay in the depth of his spiritual nature, 
in his sense of the value of truth spiritually discerned 
through humility and reverence; his radicalism lay in the 
fiber and temper of his mind, a mind entirely capable of 
facing facts, so downright and determinedly honest that 
notliing could stop it on its way to a decision according to 
evidence. The editorial writing of Professor Hincks was 
by no means limited to the treatment of subjects connected 
with his department (he had made himself quite an 
authority on certain phases of English politics), but his 
editorials on Biblical subjects carried the weight of rever- 
ence and honesty. Supported by the contributed articles 
of Professor Moore, they gave the "Review" standing 
among the then modern Biblical scholars. 

Personally, Professor Hincks brought to his associates 
the very enjoyable qualities of ready wit and of an equally 
unconscious humor. One day during the legal trial, as 
several of us were starting for Boston to listen to the argu- 
ment of Professor Gray, of the Harvard Law School, before 
the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, Professor Hincks 
boarded the train at the last moment holding a child in 
his arms and leading another by the hand. "Why, Hincks," 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 149 

I said, "what under heavens are you taking the children 
along for?" "To appeal to the sympathy of the jury." 

We each had bound sets of the "Review" in which we 
took quite a little pride, his bound with a blue morocco 
back, and mine with a red. One volume as it came back 
to me was badly marked and disfigured by interlinings 
and erasures. As these were mostly in one of his editorials, 
I had no difficulty in tracing the markings to their source. 
Upon showing him the volume, I said that they must 
have mixed our copies at the bindery. "Why, yes, so they 
have; but never mind, I can copy the markings into my 
set. It won't be much trouble." I value that "marked 
copy" as the most pleasing human document in my pos- 
session. 

Professor Churchill was a liberal. Liberalism stood for 
breadth before and after the progressive movement was 
inaugurated. If Professor Churchill had been an English- 
man he would have been identified with the Broad Church. 
His affiliations were with those of that type of thought 
and faith in this country. "Liberal" and "progressive" 
are not exactly equivalent terms. There may be breadth 
without much movement, and any given advance may be 
narrow and speciahzed. But Hberal may be regarded as the 
more inclusive term. So it certainly should be regarded as 
I apply it to Professor Churchill. He was not a strenuous 
advocate of the Andover tenet of a Christian probation. 
He simply accorded it the rights of hospitality in his theo- 
logical holdings. In defining his position before the Board 
of Visitors, he said: "I earnestly claim for my colleagues 
their liberty of opinion, teaching, and discussion concern- 
ing this hypothesis. More than this I believe that there is 
reason and Scripture in it. But I have not yet found the 



150 MY GENERATION 

term * probation' a necessity for my theology or my view 
of life here or hereafter." According to the more dis- 
tinctive liberal theology, he preferred to regard the earthly 
life as a period of "moral education." The work of Pro- 
fessor Churchill on the "Review" was mainly on subjects 
to be classed under "Literature and Life." His contribu- 
tions were in many instances very careful studies. Such, 
for example, were his editorials on Matthew Arnold, 
Wendell Phillips, Phillips Brooks, Bishop Simpson, and 
others in like relation to public life. 

Professor Churchill was an Andover man, to the manner 
bred if not born, a graduate of Phillips Academy as well 
as of the Seminary and a teacher in both from the time of 
his graduation. My intimacy with him began in our student 
days in the Seminary, and was maintained during the 
intervening years, till it was resumed in the close com- 
panionship of our service as colleagues in the homiletical 
department. He was a great friend. I never knew a man 
with a greater capacity for friendship. It was the kind of 
friendship to lighten labor, to stimulate to good thoughts 
and good acts, to help one to keep faith in human nature. 

I have introduced these brief personal sketches of my 
editorial colleagues as having a fit place in autobiograph- 
ical notes, for the personal relations which the ten years 
of editorial service established were intimate and lasting. 
Not long ago I received a letter from one of the group, 
who like myself had gone over in later years into admin- 
istrative service, in which referring to the "good old days 
of the Andover Review," he added, "Not that I would say 
the former days were better than these, but in respect to 
friendships and the 'cause' they were the golden days of 
my Ufe." 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 



151 



The reUgious public to which the Andover movement 
was most directly and in a sense most responsibly related, 
was represented by the churches which belonged to the 
constituency of the Seminary. Whenever an Andover 
student was now called to the pastorate of one of these 
churches, he was considered in an unusuoi degree as a 
representative of the Seminary. According to an ancient 
and binding custom of the churches of the Congregational 
order, a candidate for the pastorate of a church was ex- 
amined in his theological beliefs by a council made up of 
representatives of the neighboring churches. This custom 
was observed with scrupulous fidelity. The examination 
was conducted in pubhc, and was carried on with an in- 
terest and often with a zest seldom seen in the passing of 
academic tests. It was not to be supposed that an Andover 
man would escape this ordeal. To the ministers present it 
was the opportunity, as they assumed, to learn almost at 
first hand what were the teachings of the classroom. To 
the congregation, it was a welcome occasion for coming 
into an understanding of the effect of his theological views 
upon the spiritual life of their chosen pastor. I was fre- 
quently invited to be present and take part in these 
councils. They were, I think, as informing to me as to the 
others. I often wondered at the maturity and independ- 
ence of thought displayed by the candidate. I never de- 
tected any mere repetition of the teachings of the Semi- 
nary. There was seldom any evidence that the candidate 
was making statements or answering questions in a repre- 
sentative capacity. It was only the things which were real 
to him that statement or question revealed; and this self- 
revealing process was always impressive. It was influential 
in shaping the opinions of the councils. It carried convic- 



152 MY GENERATION 

tion to the great majority who watched it. Frequently 
the decision of a council was unanimous in favor of the 
candidate. I recall no instance in which an Andover man 
was denied ordination or installation, even in the most 
exciting periods of the controversy. 

The experience of students seeking missionary service 
was entirely different. The American Board was at that 
time, as has been said, a close corporation. The Prudential 
Committee, its executive board which passed upon all 
applicants for missionary service, held its sessions in pri- 
vate. Previous to the presentation of these "cases" to 
the Prudential Committee, they were "handled" by the 
Home Secretary of the Board according to what had 
become the conventional method. 

This use of the corporate power of the American Board 
was not in accordance with its original intention or with 
its traditions. The incorporation of the Board was for the 
purpose of recognizing and insuring the breadth of its 
purpose. It was to be an undenominational body, including 
especially Presbyterians and Dutch Reformed as well as 
Congregationalists. Its prudential committee was not to 
be a theological tribunal. Its secretaries were to be, as had 
been the case, statesmen in the administration of missions, 
not partisan propagandists. But the Board had fallen upon 
a time when the organization had lost the reason for its 
undenominational character, and yet had not assumed 
the safeguards of denominational control. This was the 
time in which it was taken possession of by theological 
partisans for partisan ends, under whose domination the 
suppression of the Andover heresy was of greater account 
than the prosecution of missions; or to state their position 
most charitably, missions could not be prosecuted if the 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 153 

new heresy was not suppressed. If allowed, it would "cut 
the nerve of missions." 

The following letter from the Honorable Alpheus Hardy, 
declining a reelection to the Prudential Committee of 
the Board, discloses the situation as one saw it from the 
inside : 

To the President and Corporate Members of the American 
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions — 

Brethren: I fully appreciate the honor you have conferred 
upon me in declining to accept my resignation, and in reelecting 
me upon the Prudential Committee. 

I believe there has been during the past few years a divergence 
in the practical management of one part of the Board's work, 
which has, to some extent, brought the Board from its broad, 
catholic, "undenominational," and charitable position to be 
a partisan in questions that are not within its province, are 
local, in a measure personal and divisive. With such a policy I 
cannot agree, and believing it to be detrimental to the best 
interest of the Board, must decline to be a member of a body 
upholding it, viz. the Prudential Committee. 

I remain with respect, now and ever, your co-laborer in the 
work to which every follower of Christ is commissioned 

Alpheus Hardy 

Boston, October 18, 1886 

In communicating this letter to the public, according 
to Mr. Hardy's personal request, President Mark Hopkins 
made a somewhat extended statement on his own account, 
confirming the statement of Mr. Hardy, explaining more 
at length the reasons for the existing difiiculties in the 
Board, and advocating as the only method of relief the 
transfer of the theological examination of missionary can- 
didates from the Prudential Committee to the councils of 
the churches. The policy which President Hopkins advo- 



154 MY GENERATION 

cated received growing support, from the constant ac- 
ceptance by councils of the rejected candidates of the 
Prudential Committee as pastors of churches, until, as 
will appear later, the policy was merged into the larger 
change, through which the Board ceased to be a private 
corporation, and was made a representative body. The 
most striking and influential incident in effecting this 
change was what was known as "The Case of the Rev- 
erend William H. Noyes." The case of the Reverend 
Robert Hume, an honored missionary of the Board in 
India, who was at first denied a return to his post while 
on leave of absence in this country, for having expressed 
sentiments in harmony with the "Andover theory," was 
a still more serious and influential incident, but it was of 
different order. 

William H. Noyes, the son of a missionary, and his 
classmate Daniel T. Torrey (Andover, 1887), applied 
during their last year in the Seminary for acceptance as 
missionaries of the American Board. The Prudential Com- 
mittee declined to accept them on the ground that they 
entertained what they believed to be "a reasonable hope 
that the love of God in Christ will be revealed after death 
to those who have not known Christ in this life; this hope 
being entertained as a necessary corollary of the doctrine 
of a universal atonement." After being informed that they 
could not be accepted as long as they entertained this 
"hope" or "inference," they turned to the pastorate, 
hoping at some later time to be able to realize their mis- 
sionary purpose. Mr. Torrey was ordained by a representa- 
tive council of churches as pastor of the Harvard Church, 
Dorchester. Mr. Noyes was called to serve temporarily as 
an assistant at the Berkeley Street Church, Boston. Dur- 



I 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 155 

ing this year of service, an unusual interest in missions 
was awakened in the Society of Christian Endeavor con- 
nected with the church, by an appeal from Japan in the 
"Missionary Herald." After stating the great spiritual 
necessities of large portions of the country, the appeal de- 
clared, "This desire for missionaries is not one of a sin- 
gle night only; it is a constant and unquenchable thirst." 
As this appeal was read at a monthly missionary meeting 
of the society, the minds of those present turned spon- 
taneously to Mr. Noyes. "Why can we not send him.'' Let 
us petition the church to make him their missionary." 
The church, of which Dr. Dickinson was pastor, an ardent 
advocate of missions, a corporate member of the Board, 
was very much moved by this request, and after due con- 
sultation with various pastors and friends of missions, 
among whom was Dr. William E. Merriman, voted to 
take the necessary steps to the carrying-out of the request. 
Accordingly the church called a large council of the neigh- 
boring churches to determine upon the advisability of 
their action in proposing to make Mr. Noyes the foreign 
missionary of the church, and, if deemed wise, to ordain 
Mr. Noyes to that service. Of the twenty-two churches 
invited, two declined the invitation and two were un- 
represented. Mr. Noyes made a full statement of his theo- 
logical views, and answered all questions with clearness 
and frankness. In the private session of the council a 
great unanimity of feeling was manifested in regard to 
his fitness for the missionary service. There was no in- 
timation of any theological unfitness. The question was 
in regard to the propriety of getting the case of Mr. 
Noyes once more before the Board. It was agreed that 
Mr. Noyes should not be asked to offer himself again. 



156 MY GENERATION 

Might it not, however, be advisable to proceed to ordain 
Mr. Noyes as a foreign missionary, with the understand- 
ing that the Berkeley Street Church should then, with the 
sanction and support of the council, endeavor to secure the 
recognition of Mr. Noyes as a missionary of the Board? 
The following resolution was passed with a single dissent- 
ing vote: 

Voted — That this Council expresses its satisfaction with the 
examination of Mr. W. H. Noyes, and that we proceed to ordain 
him as a foreign missionary, and advise this church to endeavor 
to secure an arrangement by which he can work under the same 
direction as the other ministers of the Congregational Churches, 
and that, in case such an arrangement cannot be made, this 
church assume the responsibility of his direction and support. 

The church at once acted upon the advice of the council, 
and resubmitted the case of Mr. Noyes to the Prudential 
Committee, but without affecting any change in the 
former result. In the conference with the Committee 
which ensued, Mr. Noyes reaffirmed the liberty of holding 
the "reasonable hope" which he had cherished, and the 
Committee reaffirmed its unwiUingness, under the caution- 
ary instructions which it had received at the annual meet- 
ing of the Board at Des Moines regarding the hypothesis 
of a future probation, to consider further the appointment 
of Mr. Noyes. At the close of the year Mr. and Mrs. Noyes 
were sent out as missionaries to Japan to be located in 
Tokyo under charge of Dr. Greene, the oldest missionary 
of the American Board in that country, until arrangements 
should be made for more permanent location. The mis- 
sion was carried on for five years. It was then given over, 
the occasion for its separate existence having passed. 
At the annual meeting of the American Board, held at 



I 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 157 

Worcester in October, 1893, the following resolution was 
adopted. It was significant in many ways. 

Resolved, that this Board, in response to the expressed wish 
of its missionaries in Japan and in recognition of the successful 
labors of the Reverend William H. Noyes in that Empire re- 
quests the Prudential Committee to offer to him an appoint- 
ment as missionary of the Board. The Board declares that this 
action is not to be understood as in any way modifying its 
former utterances on the subject of future probation. 

This resolution was passed by a vote of 126 to 24. 

Still more significant were two other resolutions passed 
at the same meeting: 

Resolved, that the limit of corporate membership be fixed at 
350 (virtually doubling the membership), and that in addition 
to vacancies regularly occurring, 25 persons be nominated and 
chosen at each annual meeting for the next four years, com- 
mencing with 1894. 

A previous vote had provided for nominations to the 
membership of the Board from the State organizations of 
Congregational churches — thus bringing the Board under 
the direct control of the churches. 

A further resolution adopted at this meeting prescribed 
a reorganization of the Prudential Committee, reconstitut- 
ing its members into three classes, the term of service of 
each member to terminate at the end of three years unless 
reelected. 

During the period between the rejection of Mr. Noyes 
and his final acceptance, other missionary candidates 
holding the same views had been rejected — or, in the 
phraseology of the Committee, "postponed for further 
light." In some instances, however, candidates like Mr. 
W. J. Covel, whose cases were thus postponed, refused to 



158 MY GENERATION 

submit to further parleying and withdrew. But since the 
action at the Worcester meeting giving the Board over 
into the control of the churches, I know of no instance in 
which the Prudential Committee has not recognized the 
standards of the churches in its appointment of mission- 
aries. Nor do I know of any instance in which it has con- 
tinued to insist upon the acceptance of the dogma of a 
restricted Christian opportunity, despite the concluding 
statement of the resolution accepting Mr. Noyes, that 
"this action is not to be understood as in any way mod- 
ifying its former utterance on the subject of future pro- 
bation." And under this change of policy I can see no 
sign, comparing the gifts of the churches, or the offerings 
of the seminaries, or the quality of service rendered in 
the various missionary fields, with like results in former 
days, that the "nerve of missions" has become less sen- 
sitive to the needs of the unchristianized world or less 
vitally connected with the source of supply.^ 

' In illustration of the change of sentiment on the part of the constituency of 
the Board within a little more than a decade following the Worcester meeting 
(1893), I quote an extract from a letter written by an official of the Board to 
Mrs. Tucker in acknowledgment of her hospitality during a missionary con- 
vention at Hanover. The letter bears date of December 21, 1906, and refers to 
the annual meeting of the Board held in New Haven in the previous October. 

"I had it in mind to tell your husband of an interesting call I had from Dr. 
F. A. Noble, of Chicago, a short time before the annual meeting. Being under the 
impression that Mr. Capen was intending to retire from the presidency of the 
Board, he called to urge President Tucker for the position, saying we wanted to 
go back to the kind of president we had in Mark Hopkins. I could hardly believe 
my ears in view of his attitude toward the more liberal wing in the Board during 
the long controversy. It was most significant and beautiful." 

This personal action of Dr. Noble was very generous. I do not know how 
completely it represented the conservative element in the constituency of the 
Board. It was not put to the test, as I positively declined to allow the use of my 
name in response to the requests which came to me from the delegates assembled 
at New Haven. I was then already conscious of being overburdened with college 
duties. I also felt that it would be unwise for the Board to recall the controversyj 
through which it had passed, by placing in its most representative position < 
who had been so thoroughly identified with the controversy. 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 159 

m 

Andover as a working Center during the Decade of Conflict 

In passing for the time from the environment of con- 
troversy into the internal Hfe of the Seminary, it may be 
difficult, perhaps impossible, to convey the impression 
that the essential interest at Andover was not in the 
controversy, but in the normal work. But such was the 
fact. There was an unreality about the whole contention 
in striking contrast with the realities of the classroom. 
The prosecution, as I have already remarked, was so 
contrary to the traditions of the Seminary and so out of 
harmony with the general spirit of the age, that it was 
hard at times to realize that it was actually going on. 
Most of the Faculty were graduates of the Seminary 
and imbued with its aggressive theological principles; and 
the more recent members had but just come to their duties 
from centers of intellectual life and activity. The enforced 
attention to the controversial situation compelled an in- 
terruption, at times almost a reversal of established habits 
of thought. But the normal interest, as I have said, cen- 
tered in work, not in conflict. 

The work went on under this outward disturbance 
without the least sense of insecurity. Perhaps there was 
no point at which the unreality of the controversy made 
itself more felt, than in the failure of the protracted litiga- 
tion to awaken any fear whatever as to the final result. 
The action of the Visitors in deposing Professor Smyth 
was not taken seriously. It was impossible to believe that 
the action could stand. When Professor Smyth went on 
with his work as if nothing had taken place, his course 
seemed natural and consistent. These outward conditions 



i6o MY GENERATION 

created no excitement or distraction among the students. 
Students were not deterred by them from entering the 
Seminary, nor incited to leave to finish their course at 
other seminaries. On the contrary, there was a steady - 
increase of students throughout the entire period. There 
was a notable increase in the number of mature men, some 
of them from other seminaries, some of them from other 
professions. There was a remarkable spirit of comradeship 
between students and faculty. This was the spirit which 
pervaded the classroom. 

It is difficult to say whether this environment of contro- 
versy was the more annoying or stimulating; but disre- j 
garding either view, the work of the Seminary was in 
itself of exceptional interest. In this respect it shared in 
the revived interest in theological study in all the sem- 
inaries. Subjects of special investigation in all the de- 
partments invited the most earnest attention of scholars. 
The revival of scholarship was nowhere more apparent 
than in the more advanced seminaries. Add to this general 
fact the local fact that the majority of the Faculty were 
new to their departments and obliged to construct and 
organize as well as teach, and it will appear that the work 
of each was of compelling and absorbing interest, at least 
to him. In nearly all of the departments it was both 
intensive and extensive. Theology was making severe 
demands upon close and accurate scholarship, and its j 
demand was equally urgent for a wider application to the 
vexing problems of society. In a word, it was not chiefly 
the constant presence of controversy which made the 
work at Andover during this period of exceptional interest 
and concern; the work itself, for the reasons given, had an 
exceptional significance to those who were engaged in it. 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 161 

I confine myself, in my reference to the Andover 
of this time as a working center, to the work of my own 
department. To enter into the problems which gave in- 
terest and distinction to the work in other departments 
would divert me from the natural trend of these "Notes," 
without giving thereby any satisfactory view of the work 
of my colleagues. 

The work of my department was twofold — the one 
part covering much ground already under high cultiva- 
tion, the other part extending into almost entirely new 
territory. I must explain how this extension of the de- 
partment was made, as I was responsible for it. There had 
been in the Seminary "from time immemorial" an un- 
attached and somewhat perfunctory lectureship, known 
as the "Lectureship on Pastoral Theology." It had been 
assigned, from time to time, to one department or another 
according to some supposed fitness of the incumbent, or 
to the least power of resistance on his part. It seemed to 
me, as I looked into this lectureship, that it was capable 
of rendering a wide and timely service, and I therefore 
asked, much to the relief of my colleagues, that it might 
be attached to my professorship. It thus became an open 
door through which I had free access to those social prob- 
lems which w^ere confronting the Church. It became 
entirely logical, under the construction put upon this 
lectureship, to emphasize the new and enlarged functions 
of the Church in modern society. And as these functions 
rapidly grew in importance and gained formal recognition, 
elective courses in sociological subjects were added under 
the title of "Social Economics," which after a time were 
given in outline in the " Review," in response to urgent 
demands from interested ministers and laymen. 



i62 MY GENERATION 

The chair of Preaching, to which I had been called (the 
Bartlet Professorship of Sacred Rhetoric), was one of the 
first chairs established upon the Andover Foundation. As 
I remarked at my inauguration, the Founders, contrary 
to the order of procedure in some of the earlier theological 
schools, at once did all in their power to insure for the 
truth an adequate hearing. The Trustees invariably called 
to the service of this department men who had had the 
discipline of the pulpit. The traditions of the Bartlet 
Professorship ran back through a line of distinguished 
preachers — back to Phelps, to Park, to Skinner, to 
Murdock, to Porter, to Griffin, the Boanerges of the Park 
Street pulpit, Boston. Of course each man in the succession 
brought to the classroom his own philosophy of preaching, 
the inevitable outcome of his experience, or observation, 
or study of the principles of his art. There were standards 
to be upheld by all alike, and there was a common stock 
of knowledge on which all must draw, but somewhere the 
emphasis laid on this or that requirement, showed the, 
ruling idea which was to govern each new incumbent 
of the chair. My own philosophy compelled me to lay the 
emphasis, the strong emphasis, in preaching upon the 
personality of the preacher. After leaving Andover I gave 
the course of lectures (for 1898) upon the Lyman Beecher 
Foundation on Preaching at Yale. These lectures were 
published under the title "The Making and the Unmak- 
ing of the Preacher." "How shall we put ourselves," I 
asked in the opening lecture, "within so great a matter 
as that of preaching.? Where is the point of reality.'^ I know 
of no place where one may so certainly expect to find it as 
in the consciousness of the preacher. Around him and 
above him stretch the vast ranges of truth. They all con- 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 163 

tribute something to his message. Before him is the com- 
mon humanity. Nothing which belongs to that can be 
alien to him. But neither truth nor man has anything to 
do with preaching until each has found the rightful place 
in the consciousness of the preacher " (p. 3). 

And again, in asking about the true relation of the 
morality of preaching to the art, I said: "Preaching con- 
sists in the right correspondence between the apprehen- 
sion and the expression of a given truth. The morality of 
preaching lies at this point, just where also its effectiveness 
lies. Preaching becomes unmoral, if not immoral, when 
the preacher allows the expression of truth to go beyond 
the apprehension of it. This is unreality in the pulpit. 
Doubtless some unreal preaching is effective, but never 
for long time. The law is that the power of the pulpit 
corresponds to the clearness and vividness of the preacher's 
apprehension of truth. The preacher who really believes 
the half truth will have more power than the preacher 
who half believes the truth. But it is almost equally true 
that preaching may fail for want of adequate expression. 
Hence the occasion for the art of sermonizing, or for the 
. art of preaching; the art, that is, of making the expression 
; of truth satisfy the apprehension of it" (pp. 62, 63). 

This philosophy, or psychology of preaching, was not 
I the substance of the classroom lectures. These lectures 
, had to do necessarily with the technique of preaching. But 
1 this philosophy of preaching was the underlying and work- 
. ing principle of the department. In conjunction with Pro- 
, fessor Churchill, a weekly or semi- weekly exercise was 
^ inaugiu-ated at which each member of the senior class 
[{preached at least twice before the class. This exercise 
J brought out the man as well as the sermon. Although the 



I 



164 MY GENERATION 

conditions were not perfect for direct and effective preach- 
ing, still it was preaching, and by the choice of subjects 
with some reference to the audience, it was capable of 
being made natural preaching. It was a far different matter 
from handing in a written sermon for criticism. It allowed, 
and called forth, criticism at all vital points. The class 
took the initiative, usually freely and vigorously. Not 
infrequently the criticism from the department came in 
as a corrective. Sometimes it was necessary to interpret 
a man to his fellows, to uncover the latent thought which 
had been missed by the class, to give to the preacher of 
the day the courage of seeing more clearly the intended 
and entirely possible result which he had failed to reach. 
At other times it was equally necessary to show a man 
how he was hindering the truth by some mannerism, by 
some insuflBcient interpretation, by some false note in the 
spiritual application. As I look back upon this exercise, I 
am confirmed in my philosophy of preaching — that it 
has to do most vitally with the personality of the preacher. 
I am sure that the men themselves grew in preaching 
power, as they grew in the understanding and use of their 
personality. I am sure that I came into a larger sense of 
their possibilities the more I studied their personal apti- 
tudes. I think that they set themselves free very quickly 
from the common charge of "seminary preaching," and 
became preachers in their own right, their work bearing 
the stamp of their own personality. 

The lectures, as I have said, were of necessity chiefly |j 
concerned with the technique of preaching — the forma- 
tion of the homiletic habit, how distinguished from the 
literary or oratorical habit, how related to the philosophi- 
cal and interpretative habits and to the historic spirit; 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 165 

methods of preaching, how can the so-called extempore 
method be cultivated to insure accuracy and precision 
in freedom of speech, how escape the confinement of the 
memoriter method, how distinguish between the method 
of the sermon written to be delivered, and that of the 
sermon written to be read; the fundamental idea of the 
sermon, and its great qualities of style and tone; the 
original sources of pulpit material, the Bible, Nature, and 
human nature, and secondary sources involving the con- 
sideration of plagiarism; and modern schools of preaching. 
Of these general topics, I found that the greatest interest 
centered in methods of preaching, due in large measure 
to the very great difl3culty of really mastering any one 
distinctive method. To write a sermon is not difficult, but 
to determine whether one shall try to put into it some- 
thing of the charm of literature or something of the force 
of oratory, involves a study of the essential meaning of 
style. It is more difficult to speak without notes than to 
write and read or deliver, but it is far more difficult still to 
become a master of trained speech, so clearly a master 
that a man can trust himself, and that his audience can 
trust him. If the memory is entirely trustworthy, quick 
and sure in action, the memoriter sermon may be free 
from the unnaturalness of the method. Whenever a man 
was in perplexity about his method, I advised the written 
sermon, the sermon written to be delivered, as the basis 
from which one could work out his own permanent method. 
Doubtless a good many stick in this tentative method 
and never advance into the commanding forcefulness of 
the spoken style at its best, or into the persuasive charm 
of the purely written style at its best. But a period of 
writing is absolutely essential to most men if they are to 



i66 MY GENERATION 

gain any sure command of language. The danger of being 
permanently and rigidly holden to a manuscript is far 
less than the danger of a loose and unstudied speech 
which has never passed under the severe training of the 
pen. 

The conduct of public worship in the non-liturgical 
churches is so much a function of the pulpit that the 
subject is inseparable from that of preaching. The awaken- 
ing and guidance of the spirit of devotion in the congre- 
gation virtually rests upon the minister, and like preach- 
ing, is largely determined by his personal aptitudes and 
training. Ineptness, or lack of the devotional sense, or 
want of liturgical knowledge, seriously affects the tone 
of the whole service, and may grievously offend the more 
sensitive spiritual natures. The witticism was attributed 
to Professor Park, returning from a winter in Boston on 
his retirement, that he now understood the growth of 
Episcopacy in the city, after hearing ministers pray. The 
devotional lack of the time was not altogether in the 
matter of public prayer. The churches suffered not a little 
under the reign of music committees. The order of worship 
often took on the character of a programme. The intro- 
duction of irrelevant music prolonged but did not enrich 
the service. Some fifteen minutes was added to an Easter 
service which one of the Andover professors had been 
asked to conduct, by the moralizings of a tenor soloist 
upon the striking of the hours — from one o'clock to 
twelve. Both Professor Harris and myself were frequently 
impressed with the need of a larger participation of the 
congregation in worship, not through a lowering but 
through an elevation of the standard of congregational, 
singing. The experiment of utilizing the congregation 



i 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 167 

under the leadership of a large and highly trained choir 
had been tried with assuring success at the Central Church, 
Providence, during the pastorate of Professor Harris, and 
under the direction of Mr. Glezen as organist. I had been 
much impressed by the service at this church, as I was 
often called to supply the pulpit. Taking this experiment 
as a practical suggestion, we set at work with the cooper- 
ation of Mr. Glezen upon the preparation of a hymn book 
which might be a stimulus to worship. The now familiar 
tunes of the best English composers had not then come 
into general use, and the hymn books were scant of hymns 
expressive of the experience of the modern Christian. The 
old hymns and tunes of enduring quality were retained, 
but the number of hymns usually found in a compilation — 
twelve to fourteen hundred — was reduced to seven hun- 
dred and fifty-nine, and in the popular edition of the book 
to four hundred and eighty-nine. The Psalms were ar- 
ranged for chanting as well as for responsive reading. The 
title of the book was, I think, the best that has been 
adopted — "Hymns of the Faith." It has its special fitness 
in the fact that the arrangement was based upon, and 
followed the order of the Apostles' Creed. 

The preparation of the book was to us both a refreshing 
labor. Professor Harris wrote from his summer home in 
Bar Harbor, "Strange as it may seem" (the controversy 
was well under way) "the hymn book is now on my mind 
more than any other project." The reception accorded to 
the book was both gratifying and amusing. Where, how- 
ever, it was amusing to the editors, it was perplexing to 
the publishers. Houghton, Mifflin & Company had had 
some experience in the somewhat analogous sale of text- 
books, but I doubt if they ever found the hobbies of school- 



li 



168 MY GENERATION 

masters and school committees quite so vexing as the 
whims of churches. Some hymn had been left out — prob 
ably excluded; could not a new edition be prepared to 
include it? Here and there a new adaptation of tune to 
hymn had been made — not allowable. Like the book, 
but type too small for one of our members — that settles 
it. Too many new tunes, takes too much time to learn 
them. Many of the criticisms were valuable, and on 
the whole the response was quicker and more general 
than we had anticipated. Occasionally a letter came in,| 
like this from Professor Sewall, of Bangor, from which 
I quote. 

Last evening went all thro' it — like a Chinaman beginning 
at the end and working back to the beginning — and I want to 
tell you that I like it thoroughly, from end to end, whichever 
end you start with. It is good — full of good hymns, and full of 
good music. It strikes me with admiration that you have been 
able to keep out so much that must have clamored for ad- 
mission; and further that you have put into so small compass so 
much that is highest in taste and sweetest in music. Only — if 
you ever issue another "popular edition," do, do, do leave out 
that rascally Greenville! — which I think must have been about 
worn out by the time the fellow got it done. I hope I may meet 
brother Rousseau in heaven — i.e., if he gets there — and pro- 
vided I get there too — which ifs you may set down as a pair 
of twins; but if he does get there, I am sure his tune will have 
been burnt off of him in the fires of purgatory thro' which he 
will have to pass. But those other tunes — of Monk and Dykes 
and Stainer and Barnby and Tours et al. — just lift one's soul 
up into heaven. ... I hope those composers will go into the 
heavenly life with their creative powers all perfect, and forever 
increasing. 

"Hymns of the Faith" soon took its place as an edu- 
cating force in hymnology, popularizing the best tunes, 



II 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 169 

and helping to put the right valuation on hymns. The 
fact is often overlooked that it is as much one of the re- 
ligious functions of every generation to winnow its hymns 
as to revise its creeds. 

The Lectureship on Pastoral Theology, which was used 
chiefly to relate the Church to its new social duties, re- 
quired a certain amount of attention to satisfy its original 
demands. The pastoral offices were treated altogether by 
lectures; the administration of the local church also by 
lectures, but still more definitely in connection with a 
system of scholarships, which gave the students access to 
the working of thoroughly organized churches. Berkeley 
Temple, which had become an institutional church under 
the pastorate of Dr. Charles A. Dickinson, gave employ- 
ment on Saturdays and Sundays to a considerable num- 
ber; others spent an equal amount of time in the service 
of churches in the neighboring manufacturing towns; 
others still devoted a certain amount of time on Sundays 
or during the week in work at the Concord Reformatory, 
or in other reformatory institutions in eastern Massa- 
chusetts. Berkeley Temple especially became the head- 
quarters for students engaged in this diversified service. 
Friends of the Seminary, in cooperation with the church, 
made over an unused loft in the church building into 
dormitories, which afforded ample and attractive accommo- 
dations for the greater part of the holders of these scholar- 
ships in Pastoral Theology whose wotk was in Boston. 

I insert the following schedule of lectures in Homiletics 
and Pastoral Theology to indicate the ground covered in 
the prescribed work of the department: 



lyo MY GENERATION 



Scheme of Lectures 

IN 
HOMILETICS AND PaSTORAL ThEOLOGY 



PREACHING 

1. The Homiletic Habit 

How related to — 

1. The Oratorical Habit 

2. The Literary Habit 

3. The Art of Interpretation 

4. The Dogmatic Method 

5. The Historic Spirit and Method 

6. The Homiletic Habit defined 

2. Methods of Preaching 

1. The Extempore Method — qualifications, training, 

dangers, safeguards 

2. The Memoriter Method 

3. The Method of the Sermon written to be delivered 

4. The Method of the Sermon written to be read 

3. The Making of the Sermon 

1. The Fundamental Idea of the Sermon 

2. Varieties of the Sermon 

The Textual, the Topical, the Serial 

3. The Sermon in Structure 

Text — Introduction — Development — Con- 
clusion 

4. The Sermon in Style 

Vitality — Sincerity — Plainness — Force — 

Beauty 
The Formation of Style for the Pulpit 

5. The Sermon in Tone 

4. The Sources of Pulpit Material 

Original Sources 

1. The Bible — considered as the Preacher's Book 

2. Nature 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 171 

3. Human Nature — the study of men 

4. The Christian Experience 

Secondary Sources — involving- the consideration of 
plagiarism 
5. Supplementary Topic: Modern Schools of Preaching 

II 

THE CONDUCT OF PUBLIC WORSHIP 

1. The Present Revival of Worship in the Non-liturgical 

Churches 

2. Qualifications on the part of the Ministry for the Conduct 

of Public Worship 

3. The Service of the Sanctuary with Reference to the Order 

and Proportion of Parts 

4. The Use of Scripture, Liturgic and Didactic 

5. Hymnology and Church Music 

6. Public Prayer 

7. The Administration of the Sacraments 

III 

PASTORAL THEOLOGY 

1. The Pastoral Offices 

1. The Cure of Souls 

2. The Bringing of Men to Christ 

3. Training in Character 

4. Social Visitation 

5. Visitation of the Sick 

6. The Offices of Consolation 

7. The Burial of the Dead 

2. The Administration of the Church 

1. The Church in Idea and Purpose 

2. Membership in the Church 

3. The Local Church in its Organization — a working 

force in a community 

4. The Teaching Capacity of the Church — the Sunday 

School 



172 MY GENERATION 

5. The Church in its Benevolence — Charities and Missions 

6. The Church in the Expression of its Spiritual Life — 

devotional meetings 

7. The Church in its relation to the Indifferent and Prej- 

udiced Classes 

The venture of the department into the field of socio- 
logical studies was an innovation in a theological school. 
Few colleges had then entered the field; there was lack of 
a proper scientific background for the more practical 
professional uses of the new science. But nowhere was 
there greater need of the right understanding of the chang- 
ing social conditions, than among those who were con- 
cerned with the social instrumentalities and agencies of 
the Church. The Church, in the absence of any really 
scientific study, was already active in the field of phil- 
anthropy, and in some localities was intensifying its un- 
scientific activities. There was a growing suspicion among 
careful investigators and students that the Church was 
going wrong in its efforts, and that it was in danger of 
becoming obstructive to the progress of the new social 
order. The impulse actuating the Church was charity, and 
its chief agency was the charitable organization of some 
form, most frequently associated with the mission. Some 
of the evils of the methods employed, manifest in the 
pauperizing of families and communities, had been or were 
being corrected by more careful and comprehensive organ- 
ization. The organization of Associated Charities accom- 
plished much in the prevention of waste and of the demor- 
alization incident to it. But the fundamental idea was 
still that of charity, and the whole trend of events was 
showing the insufficiency of the idea for social reform and 
advance. The greatest social grievance came from those 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 173 

who, if in need of charity, did not want it — the vast 
army of unskilled labor. Their grievance, as it became 
understood, changed the whole problem from that of 
charity to that of economic justice. In like manner a 
change was going on in the theory of treating the de- 
fective and otherwise dependent classes — not the more 
abundant relief of the deficient and dependent, but the 
prevention so far as possible of deficiency and dependency. 
It seemed imperative that the incoming ministry should 
be apprized of these changes, and as few had been so 
apprized in their academic training, that the Seminary 
course should be open to the necessary instruction, even 
if mainly corrective and directive. This was the reason 
and the intent of the elective courses in Social Economics. 
The title was chosen to emphasize the fact that if "theol- 
ogy [was] to be appHed to life" under modern social con- 
ditions, it must be applied in terms which could be under- 
stood. Social economy had a definite relation to the 
Church, after the analogy of the relation of political 
economy to the State. The separation between Church 
and State has no correspondence in any like separation 
of Church and society. The Church has social obligations, 
duties, and even functions, emphasized by the absence 
of like political functions. This social obligation of the 
Church had been recognized in many ways, but the ob- 
ligation began to assume a new meaning and far greater 
proportions as modern society had to take account of 
industrialism which created new conditions and new 
classes. The whole social economy was modified especially 
in ways most disturbing to the social influence of the 
Church. The study of the enlarged and more complicated 
social economy was thus necessary if the Church was to 



174 MY GENERATION 

maintain or recover its influence. The introduction of 
"Social Economics" into the Seminary curriculum ap- 
prized the churches of the times upon which they had 
fallen. 

I was not at all surprised at the readiness of my col- 
leagues to make a place for the courses in social economics 
among the new electives offered; but I w^as surprised to 
find how quickly the idea found acceptance in the churches. 
When it became generally known that such courses were 
being given in the Seminary, the desire was expressed by 
many ministers and laymen that they be also offered as 
Seminary extension courses. It was impossible to comply 
in a satisfactory way with the requests received, owing to 
the labor required, chiefly of correspondence, in carrying 
on extension courses, and also owing to the lack of refer- 
ence libraries furnished with the necessary authorities. 

But an arrangment was made through the "Review," 
by which three yearly courses, more general in their 
character than those of the classroom, were outlined in 
monthly parts, with reference to such authorities as could 
be found in most public libraries. The idea running through 
these courses was that of the new obligations which 
society was assuming (under the incoming social order), 
toward those who had received scant recognition or 
insufficient treatment as members of society. Broadly 
classified such were, (1) those who represented the de- 
mands of labor for a larger social hospitality; (2) those 
who through poverty and disease had lost social standing; 
(3) those who through crimes of various degrees had for- 
feited their rights in society. These classes were asking 
in one way or another for a rehearing of their case. The 
coming question was not the familiar question of the 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 175 

protection of society and its interests, but the question 
of how to bring the untrained, the disheartened, the dan- 
gerous classes into normal relation to society. I give the 
course for the year 1889 in outline as an illustration of 
the object and method of each course. It was the object 
of this course to give a sympathetic approach to the study 
of the labor movement through the proper historic per- 
spective. 

Subject 

The Social Evolution of Labor 

Topics 

1. The Transition from Slavery to Serfdom 

2. The Workman of the Free Cities 

3. The English Laborer at the Rise of Industrialism 

4. The Factory System 

5. Chartism and Trade Unionism 

6. English Labor Legislation 

7. The Political Relation of Democracy to the Laboring 

Classes 

8. Labor in the United States as affected by Slavery and 

Immigration 

9. Labor in the United States as affected by State Systems of 

Education 

10. Wages and Profits 

11. What constitutes a Working Day: the Use of Leisure 

12. Socialism in the United States compared with Socialism in 

Germany and England 

References were given in practicable detail under each 
topic. I had occasion to know that frequent requests were 
made at the public libraries for the purchase of the less 
known among the authorities named, and that now and 
then a reading club began the collection of books and 
reports bearing upon the subjects under discussion. 



176 MY GENERATION 

Subject for 1890 

The Treatment of Crime and the Criminal Classes. 

(The Relation of Society to those who have forfeited their 

rights in it) 

Subject for 1891 

The Treatment of Pauperism and Disease. 

(The Relation of Society to those who through various dis- 
abilities are unable to keep their place in it) 

I append a few extracts from letters, chiefly of inquiry, 
to show the nature and extent of the interest in the sub- 
jects brought under discussion. 

From Wellesley: 

I wish to express my great obligation to you for the "Outlines in 
Social Economics" brought out in the "Andover Review." Sec- 
tion I has suggested and in part furnished the basis for our work 
in Economics for this winter term. It has proven to be just 
what we needed to lead up to the study of schemes of industrial 
reorganization. 

From Brown University — Department of Political and Social 
Science: 
Will you kindly inform me as to whether the papers upon 
"Social Economics" which you have written for the "Andover 
Review" have appeared in any other form.f* If so, are they to be 
had for class study, and how may they be procured.'' 

From the Principal of Bradford Academy: 

I belong to a club of Bradford and Haverhill ladies who are 
taking up this subject, following your plan, by my suggestion. 
And we hope to have some public meetings in Haverhill this 
winter, at one of which the ladies are very desirous to have the 
pleasure and profit of an address from you. We think we may 
get a company of manufacturers and perhaps employees. And 
we hope it may set some people to thinking. 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 177 

Pastor of church in Topeka, Kansas: ^ 

I am growing more and more interested in the sociological 
problem. I am coming to believe that the second service of the 
church should be directed towards this line of work, and I have 
a church here that is ready to follow in this departure from the 
old traditional conception of what constitutes proper church 
work. It is very plain to me that the church must in some very 
strong way face the question of the hour, or else acknowledge 
that when Christ spoke of the Life more abundantly he did not 
mean the existence we have to live on the earth. 

From a lawyer in Marietta, Ohio: 

Will you please inform me whether or not you have published 
in pamphlet or book form your excellent papers on "Social 
Economics"? I hope to see all you have pubHshed on that 
subject, especially on "The Treatment of Crime and of the 
Criminal." 

From a firm of young Boston lawyers, since well known for 
their interest in social questions, who were organizing a 
class in the Social Science Institute: 
If your work were in an accessible form we should make con- 
stant use of it. . . . If publication in separate form is contem- 
plated, we shall plan with a view to making this the guide for 
most of our study. Our prospects seem now fair. It is difficult to 
popularize serious, scholarly research. 

From a California clergyman: 

A number of the topics treated in your course of "Social 
Economics " we desire to study in our Ministerial Association. 
Our plan is, to lay out a course of study for the year, giving 
authorities on the subjects selected and indicating a course of 
reading along parallel lines. It would be of great assistance to us 
if we could obtain in advance references to books and documents 
on sections II and III. 

Two schemes for solving the social problem at points 
where it was most acute were at this time before the public. 



178 MY GENERATION 

They differed widely, but each required careful attention. 
One of them called for a critical examination of the prin- 
ciples on which it rested; the other invited personal 
investigation to determine its practicability. 

In June and December, 1889, Mr. Andrew Carnegie 
published two articles in the "North American Review" 
under the titles, "Wealth," and "The Best Fields of 
Philanthropy," which at the instance of Mr. Gladstone 
were reprinted in the "Pall Mall Gazette" under the 
more striking title, "The Gospel of Wealth." This, how- 
ever, was the term in which Mr. Carnegie had announced 
his belief in the efficacy of his scheme, "Such in my opinion 
is the true gospel concerning wealth, obedience to which 
is destined some day to solve the problem of the rich and 
the poor, and to bring 'peace on earth, among men good 
will.' " In explanation of the practical working of this 
"Gospel" he went on to say: 

We start with a condition of affairs [referring to the competi- 
tive system] under which the best interests of the race are pro- 
moted, but which inevitably gives wealth to the few. Thus 
accepting conditions as they are, the situation can be surveyed 
and pronounced good. The question then arises — and if the 
foregoing be correct it is the only question with which we have 
to deal — What is the proper mode of administering wealth 
after the laws upon which civilization is founded have thrown 
it into the hands of the few? And it is of this great question 
that I believe I offer the true solution. It will be understood that 
fortunes are here spoken of, not moderate sums saved by many 
years of effort, the returns from which are required for the com- 
fortable maintenance and education of families. This is not 
wealth, but only competence, which it should be the aim of all 
to acquire, and which it is for the best interests of society should 
be acquired. 

There are but three modes in which surplus wealth can be 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 179 

disposed of. It can be left to the families of the decedents; or it 
can be bequeathed for public purposes; or, finally, it can be 
administered by its possessors during their lives. . . . 

Thus is the problem of rich and poor to be solved : the laws of 
accumulation will be left free; the laws of distribution free. In- 
dividualism will continue, but the millionaire will be but a trus- 
tee for the poor; intrusted for a season with a great part of the 
increased wealth of the community, but administering it for the 
community far better than it could or would have done for itself. 

If Mr. Carnegie had simply made public use of his own 
method of beneficence or philanthropy as an example of 
what he conceived to be the true relation of private 
wealth to society, even if it had been in the way of a 
certain self-exploitation, his announcement would have 
awakened much interest and could not have fairly sub- 
jected him to criticism. As it was, it received the uncritical 
endorsement of Mr. Gladstone, Cardinal Manning, and 
many others. The public at large was delighted with the 
aphorism, "it should be a disgrace for a man to die rich," 
and heartily accepted his statements about the curse of 
wealth as a family inheritance. There was a dramatic 
interest attending the struggle of this modern Laocoon to 
keep himself and his family from being strangled in the 
coils of his enormous income. Here was a man who w^as 
not hoarding his riches, or flaunting them in demoralizing 
luxuries. Here, too, was a man whose business career, 
judged by the standards of the time, had been beneficent, 
due allowance being made for the fact that he himself 
had been made to a questionable degree a beneficiary of 
the Government through the operation of an excessive 
tariff, of which he had taken advantage. And here was a 
man who was endeavoring to carry over his business prin- 
ciples and methods into his benefactions. 



i8o MY GENERATION 

Mr. Carnegie was entitled to the credit of all these con- 
siderations and others of a more personal nature at the 
hands of his critics. Fair criticism began with the theory 
of the relation of private wealth to society, which Mr. 
Carnegie put out as a gospel. When this gospel was crit- 
ically examined it was found to rest upon two postulates — 
first, "we start with a condition of affairs [referring to the 
then existing economic system] under which the best 
interests of the race are promoted, but which inevitably 
gives wealth to the few'''', and second, "the millionaire will 
be but a trustee for the poor, intrusted for a season with 
a great part of the increased wealth of the community, 
but administering it for the community far better than it 
could or would have done for itself J" A gospel of wealth, 
embodying these principles could have no part in that 
social reconstruction which was to insure a fairer distribu- 
tion of wealth, and to impose upon society itself the re- 
sponsibility for its public uses. The publication of this 
"gospel," with the interest attending the personal appli- 
cation of it, brought the discussion of the whole social 
economy to a clear and sharp issue. It gave a new meaning 
to the discussions of the classroom, and to those pubhc 
discussions in the press and on the platform which had to 
do with the principles and methods of the new social 
order. The position taken in the Andover classroom, and 
from time to time in public, is set forth in an article in the 
June number, 1891, of the "Andover Review" under the 
title "The Gospel of Wealth." 

In contrast with the scheme for social betterment set 
forth in the "Gospel of Wealth," a social experiment had 
been going on for some little time in one of the slums 
of London (the Stepney district of East London), where a 



t 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 181 

group of university men from Oxford had "gone into 
residence" in the neighborhood to identify themselves 
with its people and its interests. This group constituted 
the university or social settlement known as Toynbee Hall. 
The striking originality of the settlement idea lay in its 
perfect simplicity. It departed as far as possible from the 
institutional idea and methods, and laid the emphasis 
altogether upon the use of personality. Its aim was the 
identification of the residents with their neighbors — 
first to know them and their conditions, then to create 
a neighborhood consciousness, and then to initiate and 
encourage methods for mutual service in behalf of the 
neighborhood. The scheme was singularly free from all 
questionable results in principle or theory, but was it 
practicable.'' And if practicable in London could it be 
adjusted to social conditions in New York, Chicago, and 
Boston? Fortunately for the Seminary in its purpose to 
make a careful investigation of the working of the Settle- 
ment idea, an arrangement was made with Mr. Robert A. 
Woods, then a member of the advanced class and special- 
izing in social economics, to become a resident at Toynbee 
Hall. He spent the greater part of the year 1890 in resi- 
dence, and on his return gave a course of lectures at the 
Seminary embodying the results of his studies and ex- 
periences, which were soon published by Charles Scribner's 
Sons under the title of "English Social Movements" — 
the first book on this subject from the American point of 
view. The outcome of this investigation of the working of 
the settlement idea through the residence of Mr. Woods 
at Toynbee Hall, was the establishment of the Andover 
House in Boston with Mr. Woods as Head of the House. 
The story of the organization and early development 



i82 MY GENERATION 

of the Andover House, including the exposition of its 
aims as then put before the public, is told in a series of 
printed circulars issued at the time and on file at the South 
End House. The record of the "House" since its estab- 
lishment is to be found in the annual reports. On the 
occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of its founding, 
I prepared an article for the "Atlantic Monthly" (May, 
1917), under the title "Twenty-five Years in Residence," 
which gave a succinct account of the growth of the social 
settlements throughout the country within that period. 
From this article I quote in part the specific reference to 
the Andover House, known since 1895 as the South End 
House, but unchanged in its object or general manage- 
ment. The " House," from the beginning until now, has 
been a constant witness to the insight, the breadth of 
view, the courage and the loyalty to the "idea" which 
have characterized the remarkable leadership of Mr. 
Woods; qualities which have given him also his influence 
in public affairs. 

Although the twenty-fifth anniversary of the South End 
House, Boston, was the occasion, not the subject, of this article, 
a closing word of reference is due to the "House" as being in 
itself one of the most complete and consistent illustrations of 
the settlement idea. Forced by the needs of the neighborhood 
to take on a considerable institutional development, it has in no 
wise departed from the original residential type. This consist- 
ency of development has been secured by maintaining an un- 
usually large residential force, and by scattering its working 
agencies throughout the district instead of concentrating them 
at one locality. There are in the settlement to-day thirty-two 
residents, twelve men and twenty women. Among these are 
five married couples having their own homes, two in apart- 
ments provided at the "House," three at different points in the 
neighborhood. Nine of the residents are on salaries for full time 



I 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 183 

and three for part time; four are holders of fellowships; the re- 
mainder are unpaid, five of whom devote their entire time to 
the work. To the residents are to be added over one hundred 
associate workers, a number of whom are from the neighbor- 
hood. The whole force is under the direction of a staff of six of 
the most experienced workers. One fourth of the residents have 
been in service for over four years. Mr. Woods has been the head 
of the "House" from the beginning, the only instance, except 
that of Miss Addams, of like continuous service. The exceptional 
permanency of the residential force has given special value to 
the social and economic investigations of the " House." 

An interesting experiment was carried out at the time" 
in applying the group system to pastoral work in rural 
communities. Five men of the class of 1892 at Andover 
Seminary — W. W. Ranney, Oliver D. Sewall, James C. 
Gregory, Edward R. Stearns, and Edwin R. Smith — 
joined together in a group for associated work in neigh- 
boring churches in a section of Maine lying for the most 
part between Farmington and the Rangeley Lakes. They 
gave over for a term of years the home life of a parson- 
age, and relied for their social stimulus upon close rela- 
tion with one another so far as local conditions would 
permit. The churches allowed frequent interchange of 
service, and the community interests were so much alike 
that the same plans for the development of the commun- 
ities were applicable to all. It was not social settlement 
work. The churches as such were the essential concern. 
The question of the sects had to be considered, though 
the spirit of union was uppermost in most instances. The 
individuality of the man of the country above that of the 
dweller in the city was very much in evidence. But the 
experiment, largely directed and aided by President Hyde, 
of Bowdoin, was successful beyond even the expectations 



184 MY GENERATION 

it had raised, and the experience gained by members of 
the group was of much suggestive and stimulating value 
in their later and more permanent pastorates. The work 
of the "Maine Band" was an object lesson in the possi- 
bilities of the group method in its application to the more 
remote and difficult rural fields. 

I should not wish to convey the impression that the 
exceptional took precedence over the regular, or even the 
conventional, in the conduct of the Department. Certain 
things were done outside the ordinary routine, because 
there was a call for change of methods of work as well as 
a call for changes in the statement of truth. But preaching 
was preaching, and pastoral service was pastoral service 
under all changes; and the supreme object of the Seminary 
was the same that it had been from the beginning. And 
what was true of my department was true of all the de- 
partments. Any one going over the courses of study out- 
lined in the catalogues of the period will be surprised to 
see their variety and extent. The prescribed courses were 
supplemented in all the departments by "optional" and 
"elective" courses. A fourth year for advanced study was 
inaugurated and much valued by many graduates. But 
through all the advances and extensions ran the broad | 
but straight course of a theological discipline. 

The fact which I have wished to make clear in this! 
glimpse of the internal life of the Seminary during the 
period of conflict is this — the work was of first inter- 
est, the conflict of secondary interest. The conflict did not 
hinder the work. It did not deter many students from 
coming to Andover or distract them when once there. The 
attack upon Andover began in the spring of 1882, in 
ample time to affect the class entering the Seminary in 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 185 

the fall of that year. The class which then entered grad- 
uated in 1885. Reckoning onward from that date, the 
Seminary graduated in the decade following — the decade 
of controversy — one hundred and fifty-seven men, taking 
no account of students in the "Advanced Class," some of 
whom were always from other seminaries. Reckoning 
backward from the same date (1885), the Seminary grad- 
uated in the decade preceding the controversy, one hun- 
dred and eighty-four men. Measured numerically the cost 
of the conflict in men was negligible. Measured in terms 
of quickened and extended interest, it left a balance of 
gain to the Seminary. As I have followed the graduates of 
those years into their professional careers, and have taken 
account of their standing and influence in the pulpit, in 
theological and academic chairs, in positions of executive 
authority, and in the more advanced forms of social 
service, I am impressed with the substantial and enduring 
qualities of intellectual and spiritual power developed in 
the stormy period of their theological training. 

IV 

The Andover Trial and Its Results 

Early in July, 1886, each of the five professors associated 
in the conduct of the "Andover Review" and joint editors 
of "Progressive Orthodoxy," received the following com- 
munication : 

Copy from record of meeting of Board of Visitors at Boston, 
July 7th, 1886, in respect to notice of Charges to be made 
against Professors in Andover Theol. Seminary. 

It was voted — that the Secretary be empowered to receive 
the charges, when specified and signed by these reverend gentle- 
men, and be instructed to notify the parties, against whom the 
charges are made, of the filing of the same, and furnish a copy 



i86 MY GENERATION 

thereof, and that they may respectively appear and file an 
answer within fifteen days of the notice, after which a meeting 
shall be held at the call of the President, to hear and consider 
the proofs and answers to said charges from the complainants 
and respondents, of which meeting all parties shall have due 
notice. 

A true copy of record. 

W. T. EusTis, Secy. 

A second communication from Dr. Eustis, dated Spring- 
field, Massachusetts, July 27, was received, forwarding a 
copy of the charges filed with the Board of Visitors. As 
these charges formed the basis of the trial which followed, 
they are given in full ; also the reply of the professors made 
within the specified time. ^ 

To the Reverend and Honorable, the Board of Visitors of the 
Theological Seminary at Andover: 
Gentlemen : The undersigned — understanding that the Ad- 
ditional and Associate Statutes of the Seminary (Art. X, XX) 
require your Honorable Body to take care that the duties of 
every Professor in the Institution be intelligibly and faithfully 
discharged, and that you admonish or remove him either 
for misbehavior, heterodoxy, incapacity, or neglect of duty; 
recognizing, therefore, the duty and power of the Visitors to 
act in these respects either with or without suggestions from 
other parties; and, from a decision of your Honorable Body of 
date 5 September, 1844, inferring that it is regarded as imma- 
terial in what way any state of things which may call for inter- 
position may come to their notice — did, on 6 July current, 
address your Honorable Body, asking leave to present at that 
time a series of statements which should illustrate and establish 
the fact that certain Professors now active in the Seminary hold 
and teach, there and elsewhere, doctrines not in accordance 
with its Foundation, and therefore — to use the language of the 
Act, which, 17 January 1824, incorporated the Board of Visitors 
— not " according to the terms and conditions prescribed by 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 187 

the Statutes of the Founders thereof, agreeably to the intentions 
of the Founders." 

Our purpose was not to table formal charges against our 
friends the Professors; because we conceived that it might be a 
more regular course for the Visitors, on coming to the knowl- 
edge of an existing necessity, themselves to enter upon an in- 
vestigation of the alleged facts, in such manner as should seem 
to them wisest and most expedient. 

Your Honorable Body were, however, pleased to suggest, that 
in the present instance, a different course would better meet 
your views, and desired us to formulate the substance of what 
we felt it to be our duty to urge, in propositions which may in 
advance be furnished to those to whom they refer. While aware 
that it is made the special responsibility of the Visitors, of their 
own personal movement, to be on the alert to observe departures 
from the true intent of the Founders of the Seminary, and to 
initiate measures to avoid such departures; we consent in any 
way within our power to further the object which they and we 
may well be supposed to have in common; and with this ex- 
planation we cheerfully comply with that request, and proceed 
hereinafter to designate certain points as among those in regard 
to which we apprehend that the five Professors who edit the 
"Andover Review," through utterances in the said "Review," 
in the book called "Progressive Orthodoxy," and in their in- 
structions in the Lecture room — no longer continue to approve 
themselves men of sound and Orthodox principles in Divinity 
agreeably to the Creed, which they have made and subscribed 
a solemn declaration that they believe, and to which they have 
promised religiously to conform. 

From a sense of duty, therefore, we are constrained to bring 
before your Honorable Body, complaints against the following 
Professors in the Theological Seminary at Andover, to wit: 
Rev. Egbert C. Smyth, D.D., Brown Professor of Ecclesiastical 
History; Rev. William J. Tucker, D.D., Bartlet Professor of 
Sacred Rhetoric; Rev. J. W. Churchill, M.A., Jones Professor 
of Elocution; Rev. George Harris, D.D., Abbot Professor of 
Christian Theology; and Rev. E. Y. Hincks, D.D., Smith Pro- 
fessor of Biblical Theology. 



i88 MY GENERATION 

I. First, we charge that the above-named gentlemen, to wit: 
Professors Smyth, Tucker, Churchill, Harris, and Hincks, hold 
beliefs, have taught doctrines and theories, and have done other 
things as hereinafter enumerated, which are not in harmony 
with, but antagonistic to, the Constitution and Statutes of the 
Seminary, and "the true intention" of its Founders, as expressed 
in those Statutes. 

II. Secondly, we charge that the above-named Professors, 
contrary to the requirements of Articles XI and XII of the Con- 
stitution, as modified by Article I of the Additional Statutes, 
are not men "of sound and Orthodox principles in Divinity 
according to" "the fundamental and distinguishing doctrines 
of the Gospel of Christ as summarily expressed in the West- 
minster Assembly's Shorter Catechism . . . and as more par- 
ticularly expressed in the following Creed," to wit, the Creed of 
the Seminary; but that, on the other hand, they believe and 
teach in several particulars, hereinafter enumerated, what is 
antagonistic to the Seminary Creed, and, therefore, in violation 
of the Statutory requirements of the Founders. 

III. Thirdly, we charge that two of the above-mentioned 
gentlemen, viz.. Professors Smyth and Tucker, in breach of the 
requirement of Art. II of the Associate Foundation upon which 
they are placed, are not "Orthodox and Consistent Calvinists," 
but on the other hand, believe and teach, in several particulars, 
hereinafter enumerated, what is opposed to the Seminary Creed, 
— the Creed in which the donors of the Associate Foundation 
put fully and clearly on record their conception of "Orthodox 
and Consistent" Calvinism. 

IV. Fourthly, we charge that the several particulars of the 
"heterodoxy" of all the above-mentioned Professors, and of 
their opposition to the Creed of the Seminary, and to the " true 
intention" of the Founders as expressed in their Statutes — for 
any or all of which particulars of heterodoxy, and opposition, if 
proven, the Board of Visitors is required, by Articles X of the 
Additional Statutes and XX of the Associate Foundation, to 
"admonish or remove" them — are as follows, to wit: They 
hold, "maintain and incalcate": 




THE DEFENDANTS IN THE ANDOVEB TRIAL 

George Harris William J. Tucker 

Egbert C. Smyth 

Edward Y. Hineks John W. Churchill 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 189 

1. That the Bible is not the only perfect rule of faith and 
practice, but is falUble and untrustworthy even in some of its 
rehgious teachings. 

2. That Christ, in the days of His humihation, was merely 
a finite being — limited in all His attributes, capacities, and 
attainments. 

3. That no man has power, or capacity, to repent, without 
knowledge of the historic Christ. 

4. That mankind, save as instructed in a knowledge of the 
historic Christ, are not sinners, or if they are, not of such sin- 
fulness as to be in danger of being lost. 

5. That no man can be lost without having had knowledge 
of Christ. 

6. That the Atonement of Christ consists essentially and 
chiefly in His becoming identified with the human race through 
His Incarnation; in order that, by His union with men, He 
might endow them with the power to repent, and thus impart 
to them an augmented value in the view of God, and so pro- 
pitiate God to men, and men to God. 

7. That the Trinity is modal, and not personal. 

8. That the work of the Holy Spirit is mainly limited to 
natural methods, and within historic Christianity. 

9. That without the knowledge of the historic Christ, men do 
not deserve the punishment of the law, and that therefore their 
salvation is not "wholly of grace." 

10. That faith ought to be scientific and rational, rather than 
Scriptural. 

11. That there is and will be probation after death, for all men 
who have not in this world had knowledge of the historic Christ. 

12. That this hypothetical belief in probation after death 
should be brought to the front, exalted, and made central in 
theology, and in the beliefs of men. 

13. That Christian missions are not to be supported and con- 
ducted on the ground that men who know not Christ are in 
danger of perishing forever, and must perish forever unless 
saved in this life. 

14. That a system of physical and metaphysical philosophy is 



IQO 



MY GENERATION 



true which by fair inference neutraHzes the Christian doctrine 
as taught in the Creed of the Seminary. 

15. That there is a "New Theology better than the Old"; 
which we apprehend is not in harmony with the Creed, but 
fatally opposed to the same. 

16. That the said Professors hold and teach many things 
which cannot be reconciled with that Orthodox and consistent 
Calvinism which the Statutes require of them, and to which 
they stand publicly committed; and that in repeated instances 
these Professors have broken solemn promises made when they 
subscribed the Creed. 

The undersigned are ready to appear before your Honorable 
Body, at your early convenience, and sustain by specifications 
and proofs the apprehensions and allegations above recounted, 
further asking leave — and giving hereby to our friends the Pro- 
fessors notice that it is our purpose — additionally to set forth : 
That the pleas publicly made by them in justification of these 
departures from the Statutes of the Seminary are invalid; and 
That there exists in the religious community a widespread 
and positive judgment, that the teachings to which we have 
referred are scandalously inconsistent with any honest and 
hearty acceptance of the Creed; which judgment, for the good 
name of the Seminary, the honor of Evangelical religion, and 
the honest administration of trust funds given by devout 
and generous donors for specific purposes, requires immediate 
and grave consideration. 

Supplicating the God of Truth and Holiness to guide your 
Honorable Body, our friends the Professors, and ourselves, in 
all this painful business as shall most advantage His cause, we 
subscribe ourselves Faithfully yours 

J. W. Wellman 

A Trustee of the Seminary. 
H. M. Dexter 
O. T. Lanphear 
J. J. Blaisdell 

Committee of certain of the Alumni 
Boston, Mass. 
23 July, 1886 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 191 

Joint reply of the Professors, eacli under his own name: 

To Rev. W. T. Eustis, D.D., Secretary of the Board of Visitors 
of Andover Theological Seminary. 

Dear Sir, — I have received from you under date of July 
27, 1886, a copy of the vote of the Board of Visitors passed at 
a meeting of the Board held in Boston, July 7, 1886, and which 
reads as follows: "It was voted that the Secretary be empowered 
to receive the charges when specified and signed by these rev- 
erend gentlemen, and be instructed to notify the parties, 
against whom the charges are made, of the filing of the same, 
and furnish a copy thereof, and that they may respectively 
appear and file an answer within fifteen days of the notice, after 
which a meeting shall be held, at the call of the President, to 
hear and consider the proofs and answers to said charges from 
the complainants and respondents, of which meeting all parties 
shall have due notice." I have also received from you a printed 
copy of charges and specifications filed against Egbert C. Smyth, 
William J. Tucker, J. W. Churchill, George Harris, and E. Y. 
Hincks, by J. W. Wellman, a Trustee of the Seminary, and 
Henry M. Dexter, O. T. Lanphear, and J. J. Blaisdell, a Commit- 
tee of certain Alumni whose names are not given. This copy is 
dated Boston, Mass., July 23, 1886. 

From introductory statements in the letter of the reverend 
gentlemen we learn that they addressed you, July 6, asking 
leave to present at that time a series of statements (here fol- 
lowed a quotation concerning that which they intended to 
show), that their purpose was to incite you to inquire into our 
alleged nonconformity to the requirements of the constitution 
and creed of the Seminary, that instead of yourselves initiating 
the investigation thus requested you suggested to them to 
formulate what they felt it to be their duty to urge. 

I am perfectly willing now, and at all times, as in duty bound, 
to acquaint your honorable body with whatever pertains to my 
teaching and conduct as a Professor in Andover Theological 
Seminary. For your information solely, I now make answer 
frankly but briefly, as suited to the present situation, to the 



192 MY GENERATION 

printed charges and specifications. This reply is not of the nature 
of a defense, but simply expresses my sense of the truth or perti- 
nence of said charges and specifications, but I am ready, if desired, 
upon sufiicient notice, to vindicate myself against them. I now 
simply define my general relation to their matter or contents. 

In making these replies I do not concede the right of the 
reverend gentlemen who sign the charges to appear against me 
before the Visitors. I take exception to their competence as 
prosecutors, and hereby reserve all rights involved in taking 
such exception. I also reserve all other rights which relate to 
mode of procedure, and which attach to any legal aspects of the 
case which are or may be involved. 

To charges I, II, and III, and those portions of IV designated 
as 14, 15, and 16, being of a general or indefinite character, I 
answer by a general denial. I further answer to the remaining 
specifications under IV as follows : — 

(1.) I deny the allegation. 

(2.) I deny the allegation. 

(3.) I deny the allegation. 

(4.) I deny the allegation, teaching that all men are sinners 
and are already lost until saved by Christ. 

(5.) The statement is ambiguous. If it means that man left 
to himself is not under condemnation, I deny the allegation. If it 
means that in view of God's gracious revelation in Christ no man 
will be hopelessly and eternally lost who has not had knowledge 
of Christ, I admit I hold such an opinion as having a high degree 
of probability, and maintain that it is not excluded by the Creed. 

(6.) I hold a view substantially like this as being an important 
but not the chief part of the truth of the Atonement. 

(7.) I hold and teach precisely the opposite view, that the 
Trinity of Divine Being is personal or ontological, and not 
modal or economical. 

(8.) I hold that the work of the Holy Spirit is supernatural 
and chiefly under the conditions of truth and motive supplied 
by the gospel. _. 

(9.) See answers to 4 and 5. ll 

(10.) I hold that if faith is Scriptural it will be scientific and 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 193 

rational, and vice versa, but I do not fancy the term scientific as 
applied to faith. 

(11.) I do not employ the phrase "the historic Christ" as 
equivalent to the "gospel." My belief in the universality of 
Atonement which is affirmed in the Creed, yields as a natural 
corollary the belief that all men will have knowledge of God 
in Christ. 

(12.) I do not so hold nor teach. No one could hold that a 
hypothetical belief could be central in theology and in the 
belief of men. 

(13.) I recognize the danger of men and their lost estate without 
Christ as motives to preach the gospel to them, but not the only 
motives. Punishment is not the chief motive power of the gospel. 

All of which is respectfully submitted. 

[Signed by each and all of the accused Professors.] 

Upon the same day on which the answer to the charges 
was received by Dr. Eustis, he wrote in behalf of the Vis- 
itors to Professor Egbert C. Smyth inquiring whether, in 
place of the proposed meeting of the Board with the com- 
plainants and the defendants, "if the allegations of the 
complainants ... in support of their charges should be 
presented in writing," the professors would make answer 
in the same way. In forwarding this proposal to his col- 
leagues, who were then widely scattered during the va- 
cation, Professor Smyth expressed himself as strongly 
opposed. "I prefer," he said, "something very different. 
If the trial is to go on it seems to me now that it ought to 
be public and at Andover, where the library and our au- 
thorities are. We have been maligned from Dan to Beer- 
sheba. Let our accusers now face the music. Hold them to 
every specification and the Visitors to a verdict on each. 
... If any trial is had I go for thoroughness." In this sen- 
timent all the accused professors heartily concurred and 
unanimously declined the proposal of the Visitors. 



194 MY GENERATION 

Whether this declination led the complainants to ask 
leave to make certain changes in the form of their com- 
plaint, or whether these changes were made by direct 
order of the Visitors is not known. But on November 8 
a document entitled "Amended Complaint" was sent to 
each of the accused professors by the secretary of the 
Board, according to which further proceedings were to 
take place. The copy sent to me follows: 

In the matter of the Complaint against Egbert C. Smyth and 
others, Professors in the Theological Seminary at Andover. 

AMENDED COMPLAINT 

To the Reverend and Honorable the Board of Visitors of the 
Theological Seminary at Andover: 
Pursuant to a decree of your Honorable Board, passed October 
25th, A.D. 1886, the undersigned respectfully ask leave to file 
the following amended complaint against Rev. Wm. J. Tucker, 
D.D., Professor of Sacred Rhetoric in said Seminary, to wit: 

We charge the said Wm. J. Tucker, Professor as aforesaid, 
holds, maintains and inculcates, doctrines not according to the 
terms and conditions prescribed by the Statutes of the Foun- 
dation of said Seminary, but antagonistic to the same. 

And for further specification of Complaint, we beg leave to 
refer to the Amended Complaint this day presented to this 
Honorable Board by the undersigned, against Egbert C. Smyth, 
Brown Professor of Ecclesiastical History in said Seminary, 
and to make the charges and specifications therein contained 
a part of this complaint in all respects as fully as if said charges 
were herein set forth in the same words. 

J. W. Wellman 
H. M. Dexter 
A true copy O. T. Lanphear 

Attest : W. T. Eustis, Sec'y J. J. Blaisdell 

by 
Asa French 

Boston, Massachusetts their Att'y 

8th November, 1886 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 195 

Then follow the original specifications enlarged by 
further citations from "Progressive Orthodoxy" and from 
the "Andover Review." 

There were certain formal respects in which the 
"Amended Complaint" differed from the original com- 
plaint. 

(1) The charges were made against the accused pro- 
fessors individually rather than collectively — referring in 
each case for specifications to the Amended Complaint 
against Egbert C. Smyth, the charges and specifications 
therein contained to be made a part of this complaint. 

(2) The more general charges of the original complaint 
were withdrawn or reduced to the simple charge that each 
professor named "holds, maintains, and inculcates doc- 
trines not according to the terms and conditions prescribed 
by the Statutes of the Foundation of said Seminary, but 
antagonistic to the same." 

(3) The complainants laid aside their assumed repre- 
sentative character and signed the complaint as individuals. 

(4) The "Amended Complaint" was presented to the 
Visitors through legal counsel, who now appear in the case 
for the first time. 

The "Amended Complaint," though simplified, did not 
remove the doubt created by the original complaint as 
to the specific object of the charges. In general, each 
seemed to point to a trial for heresy; but this purpose 
was vehemently denied by the chief complainant. Just 
before the publication of the "Amended Complaint," Dr. 
Dexter had sent the following communication to the 
"Boston Evening Transcript": 

To the Editor of the Transcript: On my return from an absence 
of three weeks in the interior, my attention is called to the fact 



196 MY GENERATION 

that sundry journals, and your own among the number, have 
intimated that the odious theological methods of the fifteenth 
century are being revived in order to attempt, before the 
"proper authorities," to crush for heresy sundry professors in 
the Theological Seminary at Andover. I beg to say that the 
only suit against those gentlemen to which I am a party, and 
the only one which I know anything about, is a friendly one, to 
determine whether or not they are guilty of perhaps the most 
stupendous breach of trust of a century not unmarked by such 
crimes. One would think that in a community of high-minded 
merchants and ingenuous business men such an endeavor would 
be received with a decent candor, rather than a spirit of per- 
sistent, if not malignant misrepresentation. 
I have the honor to be 

Faithfully yours 

Henry M. Dexter 

The Congregationalist 

No. 1, Somerset Street, Boston 

Oct. 23, 1886 

Doubtless this communication correctly expressed the 
animus of the com.plainants, but the idea of a criminal 
indictment was in no respect agreeable to their legal 
counsel. When pressed by Judge Baldwin at the opening 
of the trial to state the specific charge, Judge Hoar replied 
with some impatience, "These gentlemen are charged 
with heterodoxy. Our position is that it is heterodoxy 
because the framers of this Andover Creed have, required 
a certain conformity to that creed; and the sole question 
which we present for decision before the Board of Visitors 
is whether they have departed from it or not." 

As between Judge Hoar's charge of limited "heter- 
odoxy " (heterodoxy, that is, limited to variance from the 
Andover Creed) and Dr. Dexter's indictment for "breach 
of trust," there seemed to be a wide difference, but it was 
finally seen to resolve itself into the difference between 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 197 

the excited feelings of the complainants and the cool judg- 
ment of their counsel. A^on-conformity to the Creed might 
possibly be interpreted as a breach of trust; but before 
that interpretation could be put upon it, it was certainly 
necessary to prove the charge of non-conformity. 

The issue as presented to the Visitors through the 
"Amended Complaint," though somewhat simplified, was 
not so simple as it appeared to be. It had an historical 
background. The questions involved were broad and 
fundamental. They were such as these — What was the 
nature of the obligations assumed by subscription to 
creeds on religious foundations.^ What had been the 
usage in subscription to the Andover Creed .f* What was 
the theological intent and purpose of the Creed itself.^ 
These were questions of vital interest affecting all insti- 
tutions founded or endowed under obligations to a creed. 
They invited the most thorough and in every way com- 
petent treatment. 

The counsel brought into the trial were men of unusual 
fitness for their duty — on the part of the complainants 
Judge Rockwood Hoar, Judge Asa French, and Arthur 
H. Wellman, Esq., son of one of the complainants; on the 
part of the defendants, Judge Theodore W. Dwight, of 
New York; Professor Simeon E. Baldwin, of the Yale Law 
School; Judge Russell, a former Visitor; and ex-Governor 
Gaston. Of these the most picturesque figure was Judge 
Hoar, partly through his personality, and partly because 
of the open and often humorous expression of his mental 
attitude toward the controversy — "a plague o' both 
your houses." 

The trial was set for December 28, 1886, and continued 
through January 3, 1887. It was held in one of the large 



198 MY GENERATION 

dining-halls of the United States Hotel, Boston, which 
had been converted under the interested supervision of 
the landlord, Tilly Haynes, into a rather imposing and 
altogether convenient courtroom. The number of adjacent 
apartments suitable for retiring and conference rooms 
added much to the convenience of the "court." The at- 
tendance at all the sessions was large; often the hall, 
seating several hundred, was crowded. The interest ex- 
tended beyond the friends of the Seminary or of the 
parties immediately concerned, and beyond the religious 
public, attracting the attention of many lawyers and 
business men. The proceedings were fully reported, and 
editorially commented upon, by the daily press. 

The absence of two interested parties from any formal 
participation in the trial called forth considerable com- 
ment: the absence of students as witnesses, explained by 
the fact already mentioned that the outspokenness of the 
"Review" had precluded any necessity for the invasion 
of the classroom to secure, if possible, testimony adverse 
to the accused professors; and the absence of the Trustees 
in their official capacity, due to the refusal of the Visitors 
to recognize them as a party to the trial. The enforced 
absence of the Trustees from this cause was to have a 
decisive bearing upon the final issue of the "case." 

The trial was carried on in the main according to the 
routine of legal procedure. The argument of the counsel 
for the complainants was based upon the stringency and 
explicitness of the terms of the Andover Foundation. The 
revised Creed, which was a part of the compact between 
the original and associate founders, was to be an un- 
changeable document. Subscription to such a creed as- 
sumed its literal interpretation. This was the burden of 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 199 

the argument of both Judge Hoar and Judge French. 
Dr. Dexter argued, out of his familiarity with the history 
of the New England churches, that any omission from 
the Creed of a definite condemnation of the theory of a 
possible future probation could not be construed as allow- 
ing the theory — a theory which was not accepted, and 
would not have been tolerated at the time when the An- 
dover Creed was written. He introduced a vast amount of 
documentary evidence from the creeds of the churches, 
and from sermons, to show the state of belief at the time. 
Dr. Wellman took up the charges, specification by speci- 
fication, to show that in all the cases specified the holdings 
of the accused professors were out of harmony with the 
Creed, and subversive of its plain requirements. 

The defense began with an elaborate review by Judge 
Dwight of the history of English charitable and religious 
foundations, showing how they had been construed in the 
English ecclesiastical courts, and in the courts of law. 
Professor Baldwin continued the legal argument by show- 
ing how the Andover Foundation had actually been con- 
strued, and introduced the testimony of the more recently 
inaugurated professors to prove the latitude allowed in 
the terms of subscription to the Creed. Judge Russell laid 
special stress upon the fact that the Board of Visitors had 
already passed upon the very issue now before them, 
when they declared that "the Visitors have been con- 
vinced of the general harmony of Dr. [Newman] Smyth's 
theological views with those which have been identified 
with the history of Andover Seminary from the begin- 
ning." The argument of Professor Smyth, whose case 
had been made by agreement that of all the accused 
professors, was a surprise to the complainants, in some 



200 MY GENERATION 

respects a disconcerting surprise. Instead of making it 
a personal defense or a defense of his colleagues, it was a 
bold and aggressive defense of the Andover Creed, prov- 
ing by careful historical testimony and by equally careful 
analysis that it was not an antiquated or reactionary 
document, but rather one of the landmarks in the history 
of theological progress. The unchangeableness which had 
been insisted upon by the Associate Founders was not to 
prevent progress, but to give the necessary assurance 
against retrogression. An instrument so conceived and 
guarded could not be used in after times as obstructive 
to theological progress, nor could its unchangeableness, 
so solemnly insisted upon, be construed into an argument 
for literalness in interpretation. The relatively brief 
statements of the other professors were simply supple- 
mentary to this argument, having to do with the special 
provisions pertaining to their respective professorships. 
What was of more significance was their direct testimony 
in regard to the terms of their individual subscription 
to the Creed, which had been tacitly or expressly sanc- 
tioned by the Visitors.^ 

I think that I was the first to make a public statement 

' I have given in mere outline the running course of the arguments on either 
side. The arguments ran through five days, of two sessions, and occupied on 
the average four hours each. For any analysis of the content of the arguments, 
the reader is referred to the reports of the Boston papers, and of the Springfield 
Republican covering the dates, December 28, 1886, to January 4, 1887; to the 
files of the Congregationalisi preceding and following the trial; to the files of the 
Independent for January 6 and 13, 1887, giving substantially a verbatim report; 
and to the Andover Defense, in which all the arguments of the counsel for the 
defense, the argument of Professor Smyth and the statements and testimony of 
his colleagues are given in authorized form in a book of 315 pages. I am not 
aware of any like publication presenting the case of the complainants. The 
proceedings before the Supreme Court on the appeal of Professor Smyth and on 
the petition of the Board of Trustees are matters of court record. The findings of 
the Visitors and of the court are recorded from time to time in the Andover 
Review. The final record appears in the November number, 1892. 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 201 

at the time of signing the Creed. What I then said appears 
from the following record. 

Q. (By Judge Baldwin.) Will you state, Professor Tucker, 
whether anything was said by you as to your subscription to 
the Creed at the time of your induction into office? 

A. I find this statement which I made upon my subscription 
to the Creed, July 1, 1880. 1 did not meet with the Board of 
Visitors upon my election, not having been notified by them of 
any call to that effect. When I took the Creed I took it reading 
this statement before subscription: "The Creed which I am 
about to read, and to which I shall subscribe, I fully accept as 
setting forth the truth against the errors which it was designed 
to meet. No confession so elaborate, and with such intent may 
assume to be the final expression of truth, or an expression 
equally fitted in language or tone to all times." 

Cross-Examination 

Q. (By Judge Hoar.) You say that accompanied your sig- 
nature to the Creed? 

A. It was not copied into the book; the reading of it accom- 
panied the signature. 

Q. You read that at the time when it was proposed to you, 
you should sign the Creed, and then you signed the Creed with- 
out putting down more than your name? 

A. Simply my name. 

Q. And to whom was this exposition given? 

A. This was given in the presence of the Trustees and Vis- 
itors so far as present. I do not remember who were there; it 
was a public inauguration. 

Q. It was not a matter of consultation with the Visitors be- 
forehand, as to whether that would be all that the constitution 
of the Seminary would require? 

A. It was not. I made the statement before reading the Creed, 
then read the Creed, and, no objection being made, signed the 
Creed after that statement. 

The material point in this testimony is not the state- 



202 MY GENERATION 

ment of the sense in which I took the Creed, but the 
fact that I stated there was a sense in which I could 
fully accept it, and another sense in which I regarded it as 
incomplete and insuflBcient. 

The testimony of Professor Harris and his colleagues, 
who took the Creed two years later at the time of their 
inauguration, discloses the form upon which they agreed 
in their subscription — a form to which the Visitors gave 
their sanction. The testimony of Professor Harris covers 
the case of the others: 

Q. (By Judge Baldwin.) State, if you please, Dr. Harris, 
what were the circumstances attending your assent to the 
statutes and Creed of the Seminary at the time of your receiving 
the appointment to the professorship you now hold. 

A. We submitted to the Visitors — I think I was the person 
who submitted it — a proposal of the form in which we were 
willing to take the Andover Creed, which, as nearly as I re- 
member, was this: "I accept" (my uncertainty is as to that 
word "accept") "this Creed as expressing substantially the sys- 
tem of truth taught in the Holy Scriptures." The proposal was, 
to accompany our signatures, either in writing or orally, with this 
statement, when the Creed should be publicly taken. To this 
the president of the Board replied that there was no objection 
to it, and that for his own part, he thought it would have a good 
effect in the existing state of public opinion. I do not, of course, 
quote the language, but the statement in general. I am not 
aware that the Board of Visitors passed any formal vote in this 
matter, but it was a distinct understanding, considered on our 
part as having somewhat of the nature of an agreement with 
them, that we should take the Creed under those conditions 
When the time of our induction into office came, the Creed was 
so taken by each of us, with the statement which I have desig 
nated, and, as we understood, with the sanction, not only of 
the Board of Trustees, but also with the sanction of the Board 
of Visitors. 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 203 

The trial before the Visitors closed on the 3d of January, 
1887. Five months later, June 17, the Visitors rendered 
their decision, condemning Professor Smyth for holding 
views contrary to the Creed of the Seminary and removing 
him from his professorship, but passing no judgment upon 
the theological views of his associates and leaving them 
undisturbed in their chairs. The decision at once aroused 
a deep sense of injustice, equaled only by an impatient 
desire to know through what subterfuge such a miscar- 
riage of justice could have been effected. The length of 
time taken in preparing the verdict precluded the possi- 
bility of an undesigned or accidental cause. In the absence 
of any explanation from the Board conjectures were rife. 
The calculation, based upon a plausible analysis of the 
vote, which was afterward confirmed by direct legal tes- 
timony, was to the effect that President Seelye voted to 
acquit all the accused professors, such a vote being re- 
garded as consistent with his vote on a previous occasion 
rejecting Dr. Newman Smyth on other than theological 
grounds; that Mr. Marshall, the new member of the 
Board, voted to condemn all; and that Dr. Eustis voted 
to condemn Professor Smyth, but declined to vote in the 
case of his associates — the how and why of his action 
being undetermined. It appeared later, from the records 
of the Board, that Dr. Eustis excused himself from voting 
on the cases of the four professors in question, on the 
ground that he was not present at the session when they 
made their individual statements. His absence at the time 
was noted and the attention of the Board was called to the 
fact. The Board ruled that his absence would in no way 
invalidate the proceedings, provided a stenographic re- 
port was made to be submitted to Dr. Eustis, and ordered 



204 MY GENERATION 

the continuance of the session. This ruling was accepted 
by the counsel for the complainants. The provision was 
complied with and an accurate stenographic report was 
in due time submitted. The ruling of his associates did 
not, however, seem to satisfy the scrupulous sense of 
honor on the part of the Secretary of the Board, and he 
refused to take advantage of it. "A similar instance of so 
delicate a sense of propriety," remarked an editorial 
critic, "has never come to our knowledge." The question 
why Dr. Eustis declined to vote for the removal of all the 
accused professors, in view of his outspoken denunciation 
at various times of all concerned, was never clearly an- 
swered. The uncontradicted rumor was current that this 
evasive action was taken in the fear that more complete 
and drastic action involving the practical reorganization 
of the Faculty, would disrupt the Board. Upon this sup- 
position, the Board did not anticipate what would have 
followed if the associates of Professor Smyth had taken 
his dismissal as a finality, namely, their immediate 
resignation. 

According to Art. XXV, Statutes of the Associate 
Foundation, " the Board of Visitors in all their proceedings 
are to be subject to our Statutes herein expressed, and to 
conform their measures thereto; and, if they shall at any 
time act contrary to these, or exceed the limits of their 
jurisdiction and constitutional power, the party aggrieved 
may have recourse by appeal to the Justices of the Su- 
preme Court of this Commonwealth for the time being, 
for remedy; who are hereby appointed and authorized to 
judge in such case; and, agreeably to the determination 
of a major part of them, to declare null and void any de- 
cree or sentence of the said Visitors, which, upon mature 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 205 

consideration, they may deem contrary to the said stat- 
utes, or beyond the just Hmits of their power, herein 
prescribed; and by the said Justices of the Supreme Ju- 
dicial Court, for the time being, shall the said Board of 
Visitors at all times be subject to be restrained and cor- 
rected in the undue exercise of their office." 

At the close of a previous article (XX), after prescribing 
the spirit and manner in which certain specific duties 
shall be performed, the Visitors are enjoined "in general, 
to see that our true intentions, as expressed in these our 
Statutes, be faithfully executed; always administering 
justice impartially, and exercising the functions of their 
ofiice in the fear of God, according to the said Statutes, 
the Constitution of this Seminary, and the Laws of the 
Land." 

On the general ground that the Visitors had not "ad- 
ministered justice impartially" in the decision rendered. 
Professor Smyth took his appeal, according to the pro- 
vision of Article XXV, to the Supreme Court of Massa- 
chusetts. The specifications in this appeal were concerned 
entirely with the behavior and action of Dr. Eustis, Secre- 
tary of the Board, in his judicial capacity; charging him 
with partiality and prejudice, and with having, at various 
times and places, openly prejudiced the case. 

Pending the course of this appeal Professor Smyth was 
entitled to resume his duties as Professor of Ecclesiastical 
History. This he did, and the affairs of the Seminary went 
on without interruption during the ensuing trial. 

A bill of complaint by the Trustees was also submitted 
to the court, based on the refusal of the Visitors to allow 
the Trustees to appear as a party to the "trial." It was 
claimed that this denial of the rights of the governing 



2o6 MY GENERATION 

Board was a usurpation of visitorial power; and after re- 
citing the course of action on the part of the Visitors fol- 
lowing this refusal and leading up to their decision, the 
Trustees ask the court for "light" as to the principles on 
which they are to administer the trust committed to them, 
under so "contradictory and insensible" a verdict. The 
statement of the dilemma in which the Trustees find them- 
selves is so clear that I give it in full in a footnote.^ The 

' "Forty-first. And the plaintiff says that under the pretended judgments, 
decrees, and conclusions aforesaid, as recited in said communications from the 
Visitors to the plaintiff, four of the accused professors were acquitted, and one 
of the accused professors was convicted, upon precisely the same charges, sup- 
ported by precisely the same proofs in the case of each of the said five profes- 
sors; so that in case the action of the Visitors constitutes in law a legal visita- 
tion, if the said judgments, decrees, and conclusions of the Visitors are correct 
and proper either as to the professors acquitted or the professor convicted, they 
are manifestly wrong as to the other or others, and the same are contradictory 
and insensible; that the plaintiff, as charged with the duty of administering 
the trust reposed in it, is left without light as to which judgments are correct, 
or upon what principles the Visitors intend to declare that the trust as to said 
foundations should be administered; and that, if the defendant Smyth has 
violated his duties as professor, then the said defendants, Churchill, Tucker, 
Harris, and Hincks have violated their duties as professors, and the plaintiff 
ought not any longer to allow them to teach as professors in their respective 
professorships, and ought not to pay them any salaries out of the funds apper- 
taining to such professorships. 

"Forty-second. And the plaintiff further says that, by reason of the matters 
and things herein set forth, the proceedings of the Visitors, and their pretended 
judgments, decrees, and conclusions herein set forth, if not inquired into by this 
Honorable Court, but left to stand, will constitute a cloud upon the title of the 
plaintiff to direct and manage the affairs of Phillips Academy, and render the 
plaintiff uncertain as to its duties in the premises, and will greatly embarrass and 
impede the plaintiff in the administration of the trusts as aforesaid confided to 
it, and will expose the plaintiff to a multiplicity of suits, according as it takes 
the one view or the other of its legal duty in the premises; and that it is imper- 
atively demanded for the peace of Phillips Academy, and specially of the theo- 
logical Seminary therein, and the due administration of the various charitable 
trusts connected therewith and held by the plaintiff as trustee as aforesaid, that 
the questions arising out of the matters and things hereinbefore set forth shall 
be definitely adjudicated and settled by the decree of this Honorable Court in 
the premises. 

" Wherefore, the plaintiff prays this Honorable Court to instruct and inform 
the plaintiff what authority and jurisdiction, if any, the Visitors have over the 
defendants Smyth, Churchill, Tucker, Harris, and Hincks. or either of them; 
whether the proceedings of the Visitors, and their judgments, decrees, and 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 207 

Trustees further ask for such an interpretation of the 
relative authority and functions of the two Boards as may 
enable the administrative and visitatorial parts to act in 
harmony, or if this be impracticable that the relation 
between the two be modified or dissolved. 

The counsel on either side employed in the trial before 
the Visitors were retained for the trial before the Supreme 
Court, with their positions reversed, and in behalf of the 
Trustees Professor Gray, of the Harvard Law School, 
George O. Shattuck, Esq., of Boston, and Judge Bishop, 
a member of the Board of Trustees, were added. As the 
bill of the Trustees involved a thorough investigation of the 
law of Visitation, Judge Bishop went to England to make 
a study of the law as applied to English institutions. 

When the appeal of Professor Smyth and the bill of 
complaint of the Trustees came before the Supreme Court, 
it was necessary that two special hearings should be as- 
signed by the court — one to secure a correct and com- 
plete record of the proceedings of the Visitors in connection 
with the "trial"; and one to secure the requisite testimony 
relative to the charge against Dr. Eustis, Secretary of the 
Board, of having through private and public utterances 
at various times and places prejudiced the case. Justice 
Allen was assigned to the hearing on the record of the Visi- 
tors, and ex-Governor Robinson was assigned to take testi- 
mony upon the charge of prejudgment against Dr. Eustis. 

The two cases, which were practically merged in one, 

I conclusions herein set forth and referred to, or any of the same, are void; and 
whether by reason of said judgments, decrees, and conclusions, or any of them, 
the plaintiff ought to refrain from paying to the defendants Smyth, Churchill, 
Tucker, Harris, and Hincks, or either of them, the income of the funds apper- 
taining to the professorships respectively, in which they have been severally 
inducted; and whether it ought to refuse the said defendants, or any of them, 
leave to teach in their said respective professorships." 



2o8 MY GENERATION 

were nearly three years before the court. There were] 
several points at which a decision might have been ren- 
dered, any one of which might have yielded the samel 
result. The point which the court chose was the refusal! 
of the Visitors to allow the Trustees to become a party toj 
the "trial." This refusal, in the judgment of the court, 
was a fatal error on the part of the Visitors. "We are of 
opinion," the court says, "that the action of the Vis- 
itors was not in accordance with the statutes which theyj 
were trying to maintain and that their decree must be set! 
aside." "It is inconceivable," the court had previously] 
said, "that a Board of Visitors intending to be governed' 
by principles of justice should for a moment think of 
refusing the managing body a hearing in a case where the 
proceedings are directly against it to set aside its action." 
The opinion was written by Justice Knowlton and con- 
curred in by Justices Allen, Holmes, Morton, Lathrop, 
and Barker. Chief Justice Field dissented on the ground 
that the decision did not reach the merits of the case. "I 
refrain," he said, "from expressing any opinion on the 
merits for the reason among others that there may be a 
new trial of the Complaint by the Visitors, and another 
appeal to this court." 

The decision was related more closely to the bill of the 
Trustees than to the appeal of Professor Smyth, but the 
hearing before ex-Governor Robinson on the competency 
of Dr. Eustis to act as a judge established the fact by the 
mouth of many witnesses that he had prejudged the case. 
The effect of the decision, though reached through the 
case of the Trustees, was to reinstate Professor Smyth in 
his chair, as also to put certain limitations upon the power 
of the Visitors. The testimony before ex-Governor Rob- 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 209 

inson so clearly invalidated the judgment of Dr. Eustis, 
that it would have served to change the vote of the Vis- 
itors in the case of Professor Smyth, had the court based 
its opinion on that issue. By the Statutes of the Associate 
Foundation, in case of a tie in the vote of the Board of 
Visitors, the vote of the President is made decisive. The 
elimination of the vote of Dr. Eustis would have meant 
the acquittal of Professor Smyth. 

The dissenting opinion of the Chief Justice naturally 
suggested a reopening of the complaint before the Visitors. 
The complainants proceeded to carry out the suggestion. 
During the time, however, in which the case had been 
before the Supreme Court — nearly three years — certain 
changes had taken place affecting the entire situation. Dr. 
Eustis had died (1888) and Dr. Dexter (1890) and in the 
same year Professor Park. Meanwhile the Board of Vis- 
itors had become practically a new Board. President 
Seelye had resigned and been succeeded by Dr. George 
Leon Walker as President; and the vacancy occasioned 
by the death of Dr. Eustis had been filled by the election 
of Dr. Alonzo H. Quint. Mr. Marshall remained on the 
Board and was made Secretary. It had become apparent, 
as the proceedings went on before the Supreme Court, 
1 that the case was turning more and more away from its 
i theological aspects toward its administrative bearings. 
There was a liability that the case might be carried to the 
1 Federal Courts upon the question of the constitutionality 
( of the visitorial system. Meanwhile the change which had 
^ taken place in the personnel of the Board of Visitors 
placed the determining power in the hands of the new 
members. Dr. George Leon Walker, the President, and 
Dr. Alonzo H. Quint. In view of these two facts, it was 



210 MY GENERATION 

proposed by some of the supporters of the Seminary, 
including at first two or three of the Trustees, that it 
might be well to withdraw the ease from the Supreme 
Court and restore it to its original theological status, by 
resubmitting it to the reconstituted Board of Visitors. I 
find by reference to correspondence, that this proposal 
was seriously entertained by some who were directly con- 
cerned with the affairs of the Seminary. But upon con- 
sultation this proposal w^as dropped. It was seen to be 
essential that there should be a decision upon the admin- 
istrative as well as upon the theological points at issue. 
Such a decision could come only from the Supreme Court. 
It was also seen that it would be difficult, even under 
general agreement, to bring the case back again into the 
unquestioned jurisdiction of the Visitors. And still further, 
the move might reopen all the old sources of contention ; 
and in the renewed confusion allow some compromising 
decision — as, for example, a vote of acquittal accom- 
panied by admonition. It was therefore decided with 
practical unanimity that the case should go on, with the 
result already stated. 

After the decision was rendered it was uncertain what 
course the complainants would take. The dissenting opin- 
ion of the Chief Justice had opened the way, should they 
choose to use it, for a renewal of their complaint. The 
situation, however, as has been noted, had changed in 
some important respects. I recall the more important. 
There had been the change in the composition of the 
Board of Visitors. Dr. Dexter, the chief complainant, had 
died. Professor Park, to whom the complainants had 
turned for advice, had also died. With the accession of Dr. 
Dunning to the editorship of the " Congregationalist," the 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 211 

burden of the attack upon Andover had been shifted to 
the cokimns of the "Advance." These changes represented 
apparent losses. On the other hand, the original contro- 
versy had been carried on unremittingly in the rooms 
and upon the platform of the American Board. It was a 
significant fact that when the complaint was actually 
renewed, and an early date for the hearing had been ap- 
pointed, the complainants requested a postponement 
until after the fall meeting of the American Board. 

The uncertainty in regard to the action of the com- 
plainants was set at rest by notice served July 11 upon 
the Trustees and Professor Smyth that the "Amended 
Complaint" would be renewed by the remaining com- 
plainants, Drs. Wellman and Lanphear, and that a hear- 
ing had been appointed for September 1 at Andover. It 
was difficult to know just how much this meant. There 
was no wish to distrust or embarrass the new Board of 
Visitors through irritating preliminaries on the part of 
the defendants. Such, for example, might have been the 
proposal, very seriously entertained, that the four pro- 
fessors who had been acquitted should petition the Visitors 
that they be included in the renewed complaint. Their 
position had been very embarrassing. Had the dismissal 
of Professor Smyth resulted in his retirement, they would 
have resigned. Should his dismissal on the renewed charges 
be made final, they would resign. But their proposed re- 
entrance into the case introduced such complications that 
it was decided to put by the proposal. It was, however, 
necessary to take account of the decision by the court, 
modifying the powers of the Visitors and their method of 
procedure, and to take such steps as might insure a suit- 
able ground of appeal should it be necessary for either 



212 MY GENERATION 

the Trustees or Professor Smyth to resort again to the 
court. The reply of the defendants took due account of 
these precautions; and Professor Smyth made in addition 
a brief but frank reply covering the theological charges 
involved. The hearing was held as appointed on Septem- 
ber 1, and at its close was adjourned for one week. At 
that time the Visitors made their deliverance, covering 
in somewhat minute detail their interpretation of the 
decision of the Supreme Court as affecting their Visito- 
rial powers, and concluding with the statement of their 
reasons for the decision which they reached regarding the 
disposition of the case against Professor Smyth. 

It must be remembered [they say] that this amended com- 
plaint was dated November 8, 1886, and that the burden of 
such complaint claimed that the respondent held and main- 
tained certain alleged errors nearly six years ago. An adverse 
decision would now merely assert that to have been a fact. The 
present condition of affairs is not involved in the specific ques- 
tion at issue. . . . 

It has a moral bearing, furthermore, that upon the former 
hearing, upon verbally the same complaint then made against 
five professors alike, and upon the same evidence in all the cases, 
four of the accused were acquitted, and one (the present re- 
spondent) was condemned. That this infelicity arose from a 
conjunction of circumstances within the Board itself does not 
affect the bearing of the fact. The conditions of that result have 
never been generally understood, and a necessary and inevitable 
prejudice was aivakened against the equity and the reasonableness^ 
of the adjudication made. ... 

To some extent the present complaint operates as a barrier 
to that more direct and current supervision of the affairs of 
the Seminary as a whole, which has been indicated as a duty 
recognized by the Visitatorial Board, and especially to those 
amicable methods which should take precedent of all others. 



«l 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 213 

In the peculiar condition, therefore, where this protracted 
case is now found, and in its evident inadequacy to advance the 
interests of the Seminary, and in the unlikehness that this 
isolated case would be productive of good by further proceed- 
ings, and in the belief that the Visitors can better fulfill their 
responsibilities by other methods within their power, this Board 
decides — without thereby expressing any opinion upon the 
merits of the case — that the amended complaint now pending 
against Egbert C. Smyth, Brown Professor of Ecclesiastical 
History, be dismissed. 

Thus ended finally the "Andover Case" after a course 
of six years, preceded by two years of open controversy. 
Following the movement of the case, we have these suc- 
cessive steps — the formal complaint before the Board 
of Visitors against five professors in the Seminary on the 
general charge of heresy; the amended complaint, becom- 
ing more distinctly according to the declared purpose of 
the complainants, an indictment for breach of trust, 
though held formally to the charge of heterodoxy; the 
trial before the Visitors; the unequal verdict which dis- 
possessed one professor of his chair, leaving the other pro- 
fessors undisturbed ; the transfer of the case to the Supreme 
Court of Massachusetts, through the appeal of the dis- 
possessed professor on the ground of the prejudgment of 
the case by one of the Visitors, and through a bill in equity 
brought by the Trustees on the ground of having been 
denied a place by the Visitors as a party to the trial; the 
discussion before the court of the relative authority and 
powers of the governing and Visitatorial boards; the de- 
cision of the court declaring the judgment and decree of 
the Visitors void on account of their violation of the 
Statutes defining their powders; the reopening of the case 
before the Visitors by the remaining original complainants 



214 MY GENERATION 

through the "Amended Complaint"; the reversal of the 
decision made by the Board in the earlier trial, and the 
formal dismissal of the case. 

The results of this protracted controversy and litigation 
cannot be as succinctly stated, but they were at certain 
essential points clear and impressive. 

Owing to the circumstances attending the development 
of the trial, peculiar interest attached to the personal re- 
sult. I have said that Professor Smyth was the outstand- 
ing figure. He was such by rightful distinction, by virtue 
of what I may term his personal and professional corre- 
spondence to the issue involved. Professor Smyth had been 
reckoned a conservative rather than a liberal, according 
to the way men were classified before the opening of the 
Andover controversy. I am not sure that he would have 
become so aggressively advanced on any of the other 
questions which were opening the way into progressive 
orthodoxy, I am quite sure that he would not have been 
fitted by temperament or by training for leadership in the 
distinctly scientific movements in some parts of the theo- 
logical world. But for the truth underlying the Andover 
"heresy," which, as he believed, touched the very heart 
of Christianity, he was fitted both by his sympathies and 
by his studies to act as its defender and advocate. He was 
a wide and profound student of Christian history, espe- 
cially of the history of Christian doctrine. When calling 
in question some of Dr. Dexter's claims for certain creeds 
as oecumenical, he was able to say with unimpeachable 
authority — *' they are not oecumenical, I know these all 
by heart." He was likewise profoundly sensitive to the 
humanity of Christianity. Here was the secret of his zeal 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 215 

for missions. As a speaker on the platform of the Ameri- 
can Board he was no longer the Church historian, but a 
valiant and moving pleader for the rights of all men in 
the Christian heritage and the Christian hope. 

As the circumstance of the trial detached him from his 
colleagues, he carried the distinction which this detach- 
ment conferred upon him with dignity, courage, and gen- 
uine simplicity. His legal opponents were impressed by 
his behavior and carriage. He did not ask for sympathy or 
invite it. He stood four-square against the adverse cir- 
cumstances creating his isolation, which in spite of the 
oneness of all concerned in the struggle had its painful 
realities. His patient strength lay in the satisfactions of 
duty, and in the undaunted assurance of the ultimate 
success of his contention. There was not a little of the 
spirit of Luther in the concluding words of his defense: 
"What I maintain and where I abide in good conscience 
is this : I have not violated my obligations under the Creed, 
even upon a close and technical construction of them. 
And if, as I also maintain, the Creed is a summary of 
principles which are to be applied and developed from 
generation to generation, I have done something far 
better and more faithful than a literal repetition of them. 
I have used them, and with them have confronted present 
great and important questions of religious thought and 
life." The vindication of the man whose whole course of 
action justified such words as these, was not to be over- 
looked in any fair estimate of the greater results of the 
trial. It was no mere sentiment which led the public to 
regard the culmination of the trial, in the restoration of 
Professor Smyth to his professorial standing in the Sem- 
inary, as of the nature of a personal triumph. 



2i6 MY GENERATION 

An uncalculated, but salutary result of the trial was 
its exposure of the folly of the over-use of theological 
safeguards. The Andover Foundation was guarded by an 
elaborate creed, which in turn was guarded by a carefully 
devised system of visitation. The Creed was calculated, 
by reason of its excessive specifications, to confuse the 
mind as to its essential purpose and as to its actual tend- 
ency. Even so fundamentally honest and so acute a mind 
as that of Judge Hoar failed to discern its actual bearings. 
It remained for Professor Smyth to point out by a careful 
historical analysis the real direction of the Creed; to show 
that it had a forward, not a backward, look, and that its 
restrictions were set up to guard against retreat, not 
against advance. In like manner the visitorial system was 
so devised as to create unwittingly the very liability to 
inconsistency and injustice which has been so deplorably 
in evidence. The Board of Visitors which dismissed the 
case against Professor Smyth, charitably characterize the 
injustice of the action of their predecessors as an "in- 
felicity (which) arose from a conjunction of circumstances 
within the Board itself." It is due to the Founders to note 
their wisdom in the provision they made to correct any 
miscarriage of justice on the part of the Visitors. They 
put the Visitors within easy reach of the Supreme Court. 
They had the sagacity to see that men of religious char- 
acter and purpose were not infallible in the exercise of 
justice; that in fact religious zeal might divert their steps 
from the straight and narrow path of justice. The Sem- 
inary and the churches are indebted to the Supreme Court 
of Massachusetts for its clear apprehension of the claims 
of justice in their decision in the Andover case, although 
it kept as far away as possible from the theological issues 



I THE ANDOVER PERIOD 217 

involved. The decision would have been still more satis- 
factory had it entered more fully into the relations be- 
tween the two boards, though as I have said in the sec- 
tion of this chapter bearing on the proposed action of 
the Trustees in the establishment of a new chair free 
from visitorial jurisdiction, it was only in this way that 
real institutional freedom could have been gained. It 
would have been sufficient to have made the visitorial 
system a subordinate, rather than as it is now, the dom- 
inating part of the Foundation. Andover has been some- 
what relieved of the excessive burden of its safeguards, but 
it is still too heavily weighted with its defensive and 
offensive armor to act in possible contingencies in the full 
freedom of its strength. 

The result which was most definitely secured, through 
the protracted trial — the result, that is, which was actually 
reached, and which could only have been reached through 
conflict, was a reasonable assurance of theological freedom. 
This result was the answer to those who deprecated the 
fight and would have been willing to divert the issue. It 
represented something achieved, something won. The fact 
that it was reached through a reversal of judgment made 
the victory more complete. Between the original judgment 
and its reversal, public sentiment had grown into an 
almost unanimous approval of the freedom secured. Very 
few feared any danger from it. The long struggle had 
familiarized the public mind with the spirit and intent of 
the larger freedom. The danger from acquired freedom is 
indeed quite different from the danger of inherited free- 
dom. It is more obvious, but really less to be feared. The 
utmost danger from acquired freedom lies in the possible 
tendency to over-use it. The danger from inherited freedom 



2i8 MY GENERATION 

is not license but stagnation. This danger had begun to 
mark the freedom of the New England churches of the 
Puritan faith. The New England theology had begun to 
stagnate. Its great traditions were no longer urging it 
forward, and it was not sensitive to the stirrings of the 
new life from without. By contrast, any theological free- 
dom like that won in the Andover fight was safe. It was a 
freedom to be respected, and trusted. A very significant 
change in this respect was indicated in the final decree of 
the Visitors, in their reference to subscription to the Creed. 
All suspicion and distrust had now passed away. "Since 
the date of the Amended Complaint," they say, "that 
person [Professor Smyth] has again subscribed to the 
creed of the Seminary as required by the Statutes; a 
creed which this learned and Christian gentleman must 
be supposed to have taken intelligently." "Intelligently," 
not literally, not evasively, but in consistency with his 
well-known views, and in accordance with his declared 
understanding of the Creed itself. Here at last is the full 
recognition of the right of personal interpretation in the 
matter of creed subscription. The Andover conflict 
brought to those who won the rights which they de- 
fended, and through them to all who set a proper value 
upon theological freedom, the possession of a responsible 
and respected freedom. "Suffice it to say," is the con- 
clusion of an editorial writer in the secular press who had 
carefully watched the whole course of the conflict, "that 
there seems to be no longer any question that Progressive 
Orthodoxy is orthodox; and that its progress is in the 
direction of bringing, by methods adapted to the con- 
ditions of to-day, to bear upon the needs of to-day, that 
gospel which is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 219 

It is much to say of the result of the Andover trial that 
it secured a larger theological freedom for the Seminary — 
its professors and students and graduates — and also for 
theological education everywhere and for the ministry at 
-large; but it is far more to be able to say, as I think it can 
truthfully be said, that the Andover controversy, of which 
the trial was the culmination, contributed its part toward 
that vastly greater end of theological freedom, namely 
the freedom of Christianity. Much as it means for men to 
be free in their holding of the Christian faith, it is in- 
finitely more that the faith itself shall be kept free, or if 
in any wise bound, shall be set free. The great struggle 
within the field of doctrine has always been to break the 
hold of fettering and restrictive dogmas. These dogmas 
have been the obstructive forces in the way of a working 
Christianity, — the dogma of a "particular" election, the 
dogma of a limited atonement, and, last, the dogma of a 
restricted opportunity. It was a sad comment on the 
assumed and even boasted freedom of the New England 
theology, of which Andover was a chief exponent, that a 
theology which had won the conflict for a universal atone- 
ment should surrender to the dogma of a restricted Chris- 
Itian opportunity; and that the missionary organization 
called into being to carry out the motive of a universal 
, atonement, should shift its motive of action to this same 
dogma of a restricted Christian opportunity. It was this 
arrested development and perverted appHcation of an 
otherwise advanced theology, which made the Andover 
contest in the courts, and the Andover contention in the 
American Board, one and the same conflict. And the re- 
sult.'* Who now holds in good faith the doctrine of a uni- 
«versal atonement, compelled at the same time to limit 



220 MY GENERATION 

its application to the merest fraction of the human race? 
Who now holds a working interest in missions, compelled 
at the same time to find the motive to missions in the 
arbitrary limitation of the Christian opportunity? The 
conception of a future opportunity for those who have 
not known or understood the Christ, denounced as a fatal 
heresy, derided as a speculation, to be allowed if at all 
only as a hope, was given its true place in the larger inter- 
pretation of Christianity. It is no longer merely a possible 
inference, it is seen to inhere in the spirit and intent of 
the Christian faith; a faith which is constantly extending 
its boundaries and becoming more and more capable of 
including within its range the possibilities of the future 
world; a faith which follows with unfaltering step the 
path of every man on his way to his final destiny. This 
progress of Christian faith can be measured not simply by 
the enlargement of its range, but still more by the quick- 
ening of its hope into confident expectation, that expecta- 
tion which glows in the epistles of St. Paul. The greatest 
advance of Christian doctrine within the generation has 
been in its humanity. The humanizing process has been 
at work in many ways, but in all those ways that are most 
accessible and most easily recognized, it has been stimu- 
lated by that larger hope for humanity which is the out- 
come and expression of the newly acquired freedom of 
Christianity. As the meaning of this enlarged freedom is 
more clearly understood, it is reasonable to assume that 
the inspiration to be derived from it will act with increas- 
ing force upon the Church. Under the intense individual- 
ism of the Protestant faith, the churches of that faith 
have never caught the large vision, or felt the deep sense 
of humanity. We, who profess that faith, have hardly 



THE ANDOVER PERIOD 221 

recognized, certainly we have not felt, the solidarity of 
the race. But the Christianity of the New Testament and 
of the early Church was conceived and announced in 
universal terms. Nothing has yet been accomplished, tak- 
ing full account of the glorious work of the past in some 
transformations of life among some peoples, nor is any- 
thing in immediate prospect, which can be accepted as 
satisfying the spirit, or the purpose, or the capacity, or 
the prophecy of Christianity. Is there a larger work in 
human redemption going on out of sight, but not out of 
the reach of faith.? ^ The Christian heart, and the Christian 
mind, and more and more the Christian conscience have 
contended for the right to believe in this unlimited work 
of Christ. "We must cast ourselves," said one of the 
earlier converts to Christianity — "we must cast ourselves 
into the greatness of Christ." The conviction which found 
such courageous expression in the saying of this early 
convert has grown, all too slowly, but irresistibly, upon the 
Christian Church. Every period of greatest advance has 
been marked by some sincere attempt to realize its mean- 
ing. I think that it may be claimed for the Andover Con- 
tention, that it was a sincere attempt, successful within 
the limits of its influence, to embolden Christian believers 
to cast themselves more completely into "the greatness" 
of Christianity, and to adjust their Christian activities 
and expectations to this enlargement of their faith. 

1 No one can overlook the fact that the War is giving a reality and pertinency 
to this question which could hardly have been anticipated when it was under 
theological discussion. It is now a human question. The War has brought the 
two worlds very near to one another in the minds of multitudes, even in Chris- 
tian homes, who had been living in one world; and the constantly increasing 
volume of premature deaths makes its direct and irresistible appeal to Christian 
faith. W. J. T. 1918. 



CHAPTER VIII 

ANDOVER AND DARTMOUTH 

1892 
A Year of Painful Decisions 

The year 1892 was the most personal year in my pro- 
fessional life. The changes which it brought were sensitive 
and far reaching, vitally affecting the home, and all those 
intimate associations in which one's life takes root. The 
essential change was a sharp and sudden turn in my career, 
producing an immediate personal effect like that of the 
shift of a train on taking a double curve at speed. 

Early in the month of February I went to Hanover, 
New Hampshire, to attend a meeting of the Dartmouth 
Trustees. At that meeting President Bartlett, then in his 
seventy-fifth year, resigned, the resignation to take effect 
at the close of the academic year, and I was at once elected 
to the presidency. The election took place without pre- 
vious consultation with me, and in the brief discussion 
which preceded it, against my earnest protest. I urged ; 
that the conditions at Andover did not warrant my with- ■ 
drawal. My colleagues urged in turn that, in view of the 
decision of the court in the Andover case, conditions at 
Dartmouth should have first consideration, and proceeded 
to a ballot. When the vote was announced, I formally 
declined the election, but my colleagues insisted that in 
the circumstances their action was justified, and at least 
called for a suspension of judgment on my part. Their 
argument was direct and personal. "You are a trustee of 
fifteen years' standing; you are an alumnus of the College 



*l 



I 



ANDOVER AND DARTMOUTH 223 



and specially identified with the alumni movement now 
going into effect, upon the success of which the immediate 
future of the College so largely depends. Your election is 
quite a different matter in present circumstances from the 
election of an outsider. Your declination will have a dif- 
ferent effect upon the College from the declination of an 
outsider. The fair obligation rests upon you to at least give 
the matter more thought than a peremptory answer will 
allow. Our action has been well considered; you should not 
act upon your immediate impulses or even convictions." 

Naturally the situation grew more and more embarrass- 
ing under discussion. Had the Andover case been still in 
litigation, I could not honorably have consented even to 
this claim for time; but the decision of the Supreme Court 
of Massachusetts having virtually closed the case, though 
the Visitors had not dismissed it, I could not altogether 
deny its justice. Rut as the allowance of the claim would 
bring the whole situation before the public I foresaw an 
increasing embarrassment. It would naturally be assumed, 
as I was a trustee and present at the meeting of the Roard 
when I was elected, that I was consenting to the election 
and would accept it. Still nothing remained, having ad- 
mitted the reasonableness of the claim of the Trustees, 
but to discount as far as possible the publicity of the sit- 
uation, and take the question back with me to Andover, 
and submit it fully to that court of last resort, one's own 
judgment and conscience. 

Of the many letters which came to me after my return, 
a few were of a general character giving an estimate by 
the writers of the relative honor and dignity of the two 
positions. These letters were for the most part quite ir- 
relevant. I had little interest in the question of relative 



224 MY GENERATION 

honor or dignity. Each position was of so high and serious 
intent as to subordinate all thought of personal advantage 
to the one really pertinent question of effective service. 
Other letters of a very different sort revealed the earnest- 
ness and genuine concern of the writers for the College or 
the Seminary, or for the things which each represented 
to them. Such were the letters from the Dartmouth 
Faculty and from many of the alumni, in which one could 
read at least between the lines the hopes and fears, the 
restraint of enthusiasm or of disappointment in view of 
the uncertainty of the result. And such especially were 
some of the letters from stanch and loyal friends of the 
Seminary, who had patiently borne the years of dis- 
heartening controversy, and were now jealous of any 
interference with the promise of its enlarged activities. 
Letters of this kind naturally intensified one's feelings, 
without helping in any corresponding degree to clear one's 
judgment. In my state of mind, the most helpful words 
were those of persons who seemed to me to be able to 
judge with fairness and discrimination in regard to my 
fitness for the respective positions before me. I found that 
the question of fitness took precedence more and more of 
other questions. I do not know that I had ever lacked the 
courage to enter upon the new and untried. In fact the 
spirit of venture was seldom dormant. But in so grave a 
matter as that now at issue, I felt that a new responsibility 
should not be assumed in the adventurous spirit. My 
earlier and later training had been for professional not 
academic studies, and though I did not shrink from 
administrative work, or underestimate its relative value 
(much higher than that of most of my friends), I had yet 
to assure myself of a suflSciently evident or conscious fit- 



ANDOVER AND DARTiMOUTH 225 

ness for it to compensate for the manifest loss of a con- 
siderable amount of acquired power. Whatever power of 
initiative I had, had gone out in a given direction. Was it 
wise to arrest it, apparently well under way but so far from 
its goal.'^ As an old classmate wrote me in Biblical figure — 
"God has given you your vision. You have got the tab- 
ernacle under way. Turn your back on it, and it will neces- 
sitate the evolution of another man." Or as the one of 
my colleagues, with whom I had the most in common 
in intellectual outlook, put it — "To make the proposed 
change would be the transfer of yourself out of a work for 
which you are made by special creation, into that to which 
at best you would be adapted by forcing." While I recog- 
nized a certain exaggeration in the terms in which these 
views were expressed, I could not deny what was on the 
whole the real fact as it then appeared, namely, that the 
commitment to a specialized work had given it such 
rights and advantages as to make it of determinative 
importance. In the sense of the obligation which had been 
thus created, I wrote the following letter to the Trustees 
of Dartmouth College: 

To the Trustees of Dartmouth College: 

Gentlemen: The circumstances, in which you put upon me 
the very high honor and duty of serving the College as President, 
have greatly increased the responsibility attending my present 
decision. You will recall the strenuous endeavor which I made 
to anticipate and arrest your action, upon the first intimation 
of it, owing to my conviction that my future work was already 
determined. The fact, however, that you thought it wise, in view 
of the interests of the College, to overrule my judgment, taken in 
connection with the expressed feeling of a large number of the 
Faculty and Alumni, have led me to reexamine my position 
with the utmost seriousness. I have accepted in its full signifi- 



226 MY GENERATION 

cance the private statement of one of the Board that " this con- 
sensus of judgment and feehng has created a new condition." 
It has been to me, I can assure you, a far more serious matter 
to attempt to determine my duty in the light of your action and 
of the opinions of others, than in the light simply of my own 
convictions. Still after the most deliberate and anxious thought, 
I am constrained to abide by the conviction which I first de- 
clared to you, and to return to you the election to the Presidency 
of the College. 

It is due to you and to those who are vitally concerned in this 
decision, that I should state briefly but clearly the reasons 
which have led to it. The fact that these reasons center in my 
personal thought and circumstance may make them less con- 
vincing to you, while more imperative to me. 

Twelve years ago I gave up the pastorate to enter upon the 
work of training men for the ministry. The change was not 
made without a struggle, but it was made intelligently, and with 
the determination to take part with those who were seeking to 
broaden and adjust the Christian Church to its new relations to 
society and the world. There were signs at the time that this ex- 
pansion and adjustment would be accompanied by much discus- 
sion, perhaps by dissensions. The signs were soon verified. The 
past years have been years of theological and religious contro- 
versy. I have no doubt that more rapid progress has been made 
in this way than could have been made by any other method. 

But the end of controversy, when it is reached, is not rest; 
it is not freedom even; it is opportunity. The chief object 
which, with others, I cherished at the beginning, has not been 
accomplished; it has simply been made possible. It remains for 
those who contended for freedom to apply the larger Christian- 
ity thus gained to the great social needs to which it is fitted; 
and especially to lead out young men who are entering the min- 
istry, who are for this very reason entering the ministry, into 
those wide and influential relations in which a Christian min- 
ister may now stand toward society. 

One distinct outcome of recent theological movements, the 
one outcome in which I am most directly concerned, is the 



ANDOVER AND DARTMOUTH 227 

creation of the department of Christian Sociology. Your sum- 
mons, therefore, to the service of the College finds me so far 
committed to an idea at the time of its opportunity, and to such 
definite and far-reaching plans for its accomplishment, that I 
have not been able to assure myself that I could carry over 
to the administration of the College those first great enthusi- 
asms which are the necessary condition of all noble and effec- 
tive service. 

Beyond this commitment to an idea, to which I have devoted 
myself, lies my sense of obligation to the institution with which 
I am connected. It has been, as you are aware, the fortune of 
Andover Seminary to suffer more severely than other institu- 
tions of like character under the dissensions of the past years. 
The legal difficulties attending the theological controversy are 
over, and the controversy itself is practically at an end, but the 
Seminary now needs and demands the most loyal devotion of 
those who stand for its reconstruction and enlargement. My 
responsibility to Andover is not only that of an alumnus, but 
also that of an active participator in the events which have 
brought about the present condition of affairs. Knowing, as I 
do, all the facts in reference to the College and the Seminary, I 
have no hesitancy in saying that the Seminary calls for more 
arduous service in its behalf for the next years than the College. 
It would be inappropriate for me to specify in this connection 
its particular needs, but they are such as to create in the minds 
of my associates the same sense of obligation which I have 
avowed for myself. The unity which has thus far characterized 
our action is not only the expression of loyalty to a common 
idea, but the acknowledgment of a common obligation to an 
institution through which that idea has been maintained in 
( courage and sacrifice. 

You will allow me to remind you of the advantage which I 
I have had, in considering the question before me, from my 
knowledge, as a member of the Board, of the condition of the 
[College. According to that knowledge nothing, in my opinion, 
justifies any fear for its future. The confidence which you have 
reposed in me by your election, and the general unanimity of 



228 MY GENERATION 

the friends of the College in accepting your choice, have deeply 
affected me. Under other personal conditions I should respond 
to your call with the greatest alacrity — not however because 
it represents a present necessity, but rather because it represents 
to my mind a clear and most alluring opportunity. Dartmouth 
College was never in a better condition to honor any man by 
its choice. As you well know, the finances of the College are 
upon a sound basis and its financial prospects are assuring. The 
Faculty is more complete and represents a higher standard of 
instruction than at any time in the history of the College. The 
Alumni have been brought into active participation in the man- 
agement of its affairs. And the Board of Trustees is, as has been 
proved by recent acts, thoroughly united and harmonious. Shar- 
ing with you the responsibility for the immediate future of the 
College, I express my confident assurance of its peace and 
prosperity. 

I am, in most respectful acknowledgment of your action 
as a Board, and in the highest personal esteem to you as my 
colleagues. 

Very sincerely yours 

William Jewett Tucker 

Andover, Mass., March 15, 1892 

When the decision embodied in this letter had been 
made and announced, I began to be aware of the strength 
of the personal ties which bound me to Andover. I had not 
been conscious of any undue assertion of sentiment while 
the question of professional duty was pending. But the 
decision once made, I began to realize what it would have 
meant to leave Andover upon such sudden notice. I have 
refrained thus far from introducing those experiences 
which center in the home into these professional "Notes." 
But it is quite impossible to recall the Andover period 
without referring to experiences in the home within that 
time, which were vitally related to whatever had gone be- 
fore in my professional life, and to whatever was to follow. 



ANDOVER AND DARTMOUTH 229 

In changing from the pastorate to service in connection 
with an institution, it was naturally to be assumed that 
there would be much greater permanency of the home. 
This assumption was justified in regard to residence at 
Andover by the fact that certain friends of the family and 
of the Seminary had given the Trustees a fund for build- 
ing a home for my occupancy. But the house thus provided 
was hardly occupied before it was consecrated by a great 
sorrow, the greatest which can fall upon a home — the 
death of the wife and mother. The death of Mrs. Tucker, 
though not sudden, was altogether unexpected. It was 
preceded by a year of declining strength, but it was im- 
mediately preceded on the advice of our physicians by a 
summer in England, which was not without its quiet en- 
joyments. But she came home only to die, leaving to me 
the remembrance and the influence of twelve years of a com- 
plete companionship reaching into all the aspirations and 
plans of my early manhood, and leaving upon all those 
with whom she came into contact the lasting impress of 
her high spirit and social charm, equally at home and in 
place in society, and among those needing her sympathy 
and cheer. 

My marriage to Charlotte, daughter of John Rogers, 
Esq., of Plymouth, New Hampshire, took place on June 
22, 1870, in the third year of my pastorate at Manchester, 
and her death occurred on September 15, 1882, in the 
third year of our life in Andover. Twice again the Andover 
home was broken in upon — by the death, ten years apart, 
of Mr. and Mrs. Jewett, to whom I have had occasion to 
refer often in terms of filial affection. They had spent their 
winters with us in New York, and the Andover home was 
theirs to the end. These three of the family who died at 



230 MY GENERATION 

Andover have their final resting place in the goodly com- 
pany of those who lie in the burial place of the Seminary, 
across the grounds to the east of the home. 

Immediately upon the death of Mrs. Tucker, my sister 
came to Andover from her Brooklyn home to take charge 
of the young children — Alice Lester, now Mrs. Frank H. 
Dixon, and Margaret, now Mrs. Nelson P. Brown; and as 
Mrs. Jewett's health declined, to take the full charge of 
the household. Her presence brought untold comfort and 
cheer, and as the years went by, enabled the home to re- 
sume much of its wonted hospitality. This most happy 
service she was able to render for five years, till her mar- 
riage to Professor Wells, then of Phillips Academy, and 
later of Bowdoin and Dartmouth. 

Of the renewal of the home, and in the deepest possible 
sense, of my own life through my marriage to Charlotte, 
daughter of Dr. Henry T. Cheever, of Worcester, I can 
hardly write except in terms of the present. But I cannot 
forget, though thirty-two years have since passed, that it 
was into the Andover home that she brought those rare 
gifts of mind and heart which were to make her life so 
personal and distinctive through the coming years, and 
yet so unreservedly and so vitally a part of my own; the 
perfect sincerity underlying the engaging frankness of her 
manners, the maturity of her understanding and her quick 
intelligence, her unaffected loyalty to things right and 
true, her just appreciation of others, and the steadfastness 
of her personal devotion. 

The Andover home gave us Elizabeth Washburn, now 
Mrs. Frank W. Cushwa, of Exeter, her marriage making 
the family circle of that generation complete — a family 
circle now greatly extended and enlivened by the nine 




THE TUCKER HOME AT ANDOVER 




THE SEMINARY GROUNDS OPPOSITE THE HOUSE 



I ANDOVER AND DARTMOUTH 231 

grandchildren who throng our home at Christmas and on 
all intermediate "occasions." 

I began this apparent digression into the life of the 
home during the Andover period, to show reason for the 
contentment I felt when it appeared to be unnecessary 
and unwise to break the ties which held me to Andover. 
But in so doing I have been able, I trust, to reveal some- 
thing of my sense of the personal indebtedness to those 
who have been in so large a degree the inspiration and 
support of my professional life. The Andover home was 
the meeting-place of sacred memories and of restored 
hopes, which in their backward and forward reach covered 
nearly the whole of my professional career. 

During the weeks occupied in making the Dartmouth 
decision, it was impossible to do more than to keep up the 
routine of the classroom and to carry on one's necessary 
correspondence. 
I Meanwhile certain important matters were necessarily 
laid aside or held in abeyance. I had hoped to give 
considerable time to the Andover House, which had 
been opened on the 1st of January at 6 Rollins Street, 
The work as it had begun to develop under the man- 
agement of Mr. Woods was most interesting. One could 
not enter the "House" without being impressed with 
its object, and infected with the quiet enthusiasm of the 
residents. It lacked all the characteristics of an insti- 
' tution. The whole atmosphere was personal. It was neces- 
sary, however, to interpret the "House" to some whom 
we wished to identify with it. This necessity called for 
much correspondence and for a good many interviews. It 
was pleasant to be able to resume this supporting service 
in behalf of the "House" while the home life was getting 



232 MY GENERATION 

under way, and the approach to the neighborhood was 
being studied and carried on experimentally. 

Two other matters of a different nature demanded more 
urgent attention. In January I had received an invitation 
to give a course of lectures at the Lowell Institute the 
following winter, and also an invitation to give the Phi 
Beta Kappa Oration at the next Harvard Commencement. 
I had accepted both invitations, not anticipating so se- 
rious a draft upon my time and thought as that involved 
in the Dartmouth decision. The Lowell Institute course [ 
was not due till the ensuing winter (the course was actually 
postponed through the kindness of Mr. Lowell to the 
succeeding winter), but the preparation of the Phi Beta 
Kappa Address was urgent. It was my intention in this 
address to attempt an interpretation of those tendencies 
which were leading the way into the new social order. I 
hoped to be able to show the meaning of those ideas which 
had been gaining force and were gradually being resolved 
into a single ruling idea The subject of the address as it 
finally took shape in my mind, was in the form of a gener- 
alization, "The New Movement in Humanity — From , 
Liberty to Unity." I was well aware that it is a bold | 
experiment to generalize in the presence of an audience 
accustomed to close, and for the most part to specialized 
thinking, but I believed that the timeliness, almost the 
necessity, of the subject warranted the attempt. As the 
"Boston Advertiser" remarked editorially on the morn- 
ing after the delivery of the address — "There was noth- 
ing surprising in the choice of such a subject for such an 
occasion. It was bound to come sooner or later." 

To my very great gratification, the address was received l| 
by the audience which heard it and later by the press, in 



ANDOVER AND DARTMOUTH 233 

the spirit in which it was prepared and delivered. It was 
generally, and I may add in many cases gratefully, re- 
garded as an interpretation of what many were not only 
thinking but feeling. It may be a sad commentary on 
present international conditions to quote the remark of 
Professor H. Grimm, of Berlin, into whose hands the 
address had fallen, but the remark was not out of keeping 
with the spirit of the times. He wrote to an American 
friend in Boston: "I have been reading Professor Tucker's 
Cambridge address once more and shall probably read it 
again. . . . He expresses in words what many may have 
felt before, who will now believe that themselves had 
thought these things first." Even before the War, however, 
the movement toward unity had been arrested to make a 
larger place for equality. Of this fact I took account in an 
article in the "Atlantic" under date of October, 1913, but 
the thesis first put forth still indicated the working trend 
of human progress. I think that in spite of the terrible 
contentions and enmities of the time, unity remains the 
ruling craving of the world, and that it will appear in due 
time to be its ultimate goal.^ 

The summer of 1892 was spent at Cushing's Island in 
Portland Harbor. Rumors reached us early in the season 
at our various vacation resorts, that a renewal of the 
"Amended Complaint" was to be made to the Visitors 
by the remaining complainants. These rumors were later 

1 This address, after its quite general publication in the daily and weekly 
press, was revised for publication in the October number, 1892, — the first 
issue — of the Harvard Graduates' Magazine, and was later issued in pamphlet 
form by Houghton, Mifflin & Company. The address was widely accepted as an 
exposition of the deeper significance of the social movement, and as such served 
to give to the movement both consistency and scope. As it is now out of print, 
this address has been included in The New Reservation of Time — a book of 
later essays. 



234 MY GENERATION 

verified, causing further conference and preparation for 
the renewed attack; but this final action of the complain- 
ants was disposed of, as has been shown, by the dismissal 
of their case by the Visitors before the opening of the 
academic year. When the Seminary opened in the fall it 
was free, for the first time in ten years, of the actualities 
or threats of conflict. A large class presented itself for 
entrance. The Seminary resumed its work with undivided 
attention to its normal activities. 

In my personal outlook, however, the prospect was not 
so clear and undisturbed; for it was at this juncture that 
I began to be made aware of my growing responsibility 
in Dartmouth affairs. At the meeting of the Dartmouth 
Trustees following my declination of the presidency, I was 
appointed chairman of the committee to nominate to the 
Board a candidate for the position. I knew, of course, 
that the work of this committee would necessitate much 
correspondence and general investigation, but I was to 
learn only through experience of the various embarrass- 
ments and complications which it involved. To make plain 
the results of my experience, I must refer in some detail to 
the peculiar situation then existing at Dartmouth growing 
out of what was known as the "Alumni Movement," the 
immediate object of which was to secure adequate repre- 
sentation upon the Governing Board. By the terms of its 
charter, the government of the College was vested in a 
single and self-perpetuating Board, of twelve members, 
including the Governor of the State of New Hampshire 
ex officio. The President of the College became by his 
election a member of the Board, and by usage its President. 
The charter provided that eight members should be res- 
idents of New Hampshire, and that seven members should 



i 



ANDOVER AND DARTMOUTH 235 

be laymen. This last provision was apparently out of 
keeping with the usage of the time, but had its probable 
explanation in the ecclesiastical complications attending 
the English benefactions at the time of the founding of the 
College. 

Various efforts had been made from time to time to 
secure direct alumni participation in the government of 
the College, but it was not a simple matter to gain legal 
entrance into the Board of Trustees, even by its ov/n con- 
sent or through its own cooperation. In 1876 an agree- 
ment was made between the Trustees and the Alumni 
Association by which the Trustees were to allow the 
alumni to nominate a certain number, from which number 
the Trustees were to choose three. I was one of the three 
thus nominated and chosen two years later; but this 
agreement afforded only temporary relief, as the election 
in each case was for life and allowed no subsequent choice 
of the alumni by any system of rotation. The inherent 
difficulty in every proposed change at all adequate to the 
demand lay in the fact that it required an amendment to 
the charter, the suggestion even of which was repugnant 
to all graduates familiar with the legal history of the Col- 
lege, and imbued with the traditions of the Dartmouth 
College case. After long and often bitter discussion run- 
ning through more than one administration, but culminating 
at the close of the administration of President Bartlett, 
the matter was amicably settled on the basis of a "gentle- 
man's agreement," in which three parties were con- 
cerned — the Trustees, the alumni as a body, and the 
candidates nominated by the alumni for election by the 
Board. By this agreement five trustees were to be known 
as alumni trustees, nominated by the alumni and elected 



236 MY GENERATION 

by the Trustees. In the election by the Trustees no speci- 
fication of time was made (that would have been contrary 
to the charter), but each alumnus thus elected pledged 
himself to the alumni to resign at the end of five years, 
though eligible for renomination and reelection. This ar- 
rangement virtually put the alumni in control of the Col- 
lege, through the designation of one half of the permanent 
membership of the Board of Trustees, besides making the 
Board sensitive to alumni sentiment.^ 

Even with this explanation, one can well understand 
how difficult it was for any but Dartmouth men to see the 
importance of the movement which I have described. Its 
real importance was that it marked a transition in the 
government of the College involving almost of necessity 
a change of policy. It at least created an opportunity which 
conceivably might be unimproved or misimproved. It was 
the liability that one or the other of these results might 
follow which increased the anxiety of the friends of the 
College, as the year wore on without the choice of a pres- 
ident. It was this liability which made the choice increas- 
ingly difficult, and added to the anxiety of those who had 
the matter in charge. The presumption was almost irre- 
sistible in favor of the choice of an alumnus, and of one 
familiar with the history of the College. The man of un- 
deniable fitness in this latter regard, as in all academic 
ways, was Francis Brown, grandson of the third President 
and son of Professor Samuel G. Brown — at the time 
Professor of Hebrew in Union Theological Seminary. The 
Committee entered at once into correspondence with him, 
offering him the presidency and urging its acceptance 

^ For a clear and accurate narrative of the struggle for alumni representation 
on the Dartmouth Hoard of Trustees, see History of Dartmouth College (Pro- 
fessor John K. Lord), vol. 11, pp. 378-81, 455-70. 



ANDOVER AND DARTMOUTH 237 

upon him. As Professor Brown was then in Oxford, Eng- 
land, engaged in editing a Hebrew lexicon, the corre- 
spondence was necessarily protracted, and in the end un- 
successful, not from any lack of loyalty on the part of 
Professor Brown, but on account of engagements both at 
Oxford and at Union from which he could not, as he felt, 
honorably obtain release. The search went on unremit- 
tingly throughout the year, but for one reason or another 
with unsatisfactory results. I could see that my fellow 
members on the Committee were working with lessening 
enthusiasm, and I was obliged to confess to myself that I 
was beginning to feel a lessening confidence in the result. 
At last in a special meeting of the Committee with the 
Trustees near the close of the year, one of my colleagues 
on the Board put to me directly but delicately the ques- 
tion whether the relative positions of Andover and Dart- 
mouth had not so far changed during the year, that the 
latter now made its appeal to one's courage and sense of 
chivalry. The question touched the point at which I had 
become sensitive in my own feelings. I could not alto- 
gether put by the disturbing feeling that, as the outcome 
of my decision was beginning to show, I had chosen the 
easier rather than the more strenuous course. And the fur- 
ther question became more and more disquieting, namely, 
whether the apparently plain duty, as determined by 
personal fitness, must not yield to the duty which was 
making its persistent demands throUgh the pressure of 
responsibility. I can also now see, upon reflection, that as 
I had occasion to make myself more familiar with the 
problems of academic education, and especially with the 
aims of undergraduate life, I began to realize the fact 
that the more specialized purposes which I had sought to 



238 MY GENERATION 

attain through training for the ministry, might have a 
broader appHcation in the training of college men. It was 
becoming more and more evident that the fundamental 
duties involved in the readjustments of society must be 
assumed by all the professions, and by men of affairs, 
some of whom might be expected, under the right incen- 
tives, to render a larger and more practical service than 
the ministry, could the colleges be made to furnish the 
sufficient motive to the study of the principles of economic 
justice. 

It was no easier to acknowledge than it was to effect the 
reversal of decision toward which my mind was tending. 
The change, even in view of the altered situation, seemed 
to be of that personal character which would not allow 
one to take the public, hardly indeed his friends, into his 
confidence. My colleagues at Andover, as they came to 
understand my feelings, were very generous in their bear- 
ing, and acquiesced in the change with varying degrees 
of assent. The following letter from Judge Bishop, of the 
Andover Board of Trustees, written after my decision 
had been announced informally to the members of the 
Board, is such an illustration of the depth and sincerity 
of the feeling of my associates, that I cannot refrain from 
quoting it, in spite of the fact that I could not accept 
either the professional or personal comparisons which he 
so generously makes : 

Newton Center 

Jan. 27. 1893 

My dear Dr. Tucker : 

I am replying too late to your letter, but you know some of 
the exactions of my life, and with your determination reached, 
I have not felt the anxiety of a decision to be made which would 
have impelled a reply at once. 



ANDOVER AND DARTMOUTH 239 

Looking at the matter now from my point of view, it seems 
strange to me what a difference there is between the way it 
appealed to me before, and the way it comes to me now. Before 
the decision in the former instance, I was strenuous about it in 
opposition, and should be now if it were an open question; now 
that it is settled, I have been trying to extract all the good I 
can from it. I cannot write you such a letter as I ought to write 
about it. I have just the same feeling of desire that you should 
stay in Andover, and the same sense of the importance of your 
staying, but the greatness of the work to which you go appeals 
to me, and I say that your judgment has been more intelligent 
than the judgment of any of your friends can be, and has been 
conscientious and thorough. So, let us all who thought other- 
wise abide in faith and trust that the right course has been pur- 
sued. Above all, it is the guidance of God. 

I think your life would be worth little to you, if you were 
not enlisted with all your powers in a movement; and whether 
at Andover or at Hanover matters little to the incoming of 
the Kingdom which the movement serves. In comparison with 
such a work as yours, I think of the indirect and far off partici- 
pation which such a calling as mine affords for service in the 
warfare of righteousness, and am restless. But I know enough 
about your aims, your insight, and the zest which comes with 
such a work, to give you my hand and heart in this new de- 
velopment of it. 

Faithfully yours 

Robert R. Bishop 

The Reverend 

William J. Tucker, D.D. 

The disposition of the friends of the Seminary was so 
clearly expressed in the editorial in the "Andover Towns- 
man" following the public announcement of my resigna- 
Ition, that I give it in an accompanying footnote.^ 

^ It is difl5cult to frame in words the feeling among all who have been 
brought in contact with Prof. Tucker, whether educationally or socially, at this 
prospective sundering of ties. The sentiment of pain is doubly poignant, like 
that of a freshly opened wound, from the circumstance that last year's appre- 



240 MY GENERATION 

As the reversal of my decision had been fully discussed 
with both the official Boards concerned, the letter of 
resignation to the Andover Trustees v/as quickly followed 
by the letter of acceptance to the Dartmouth Trustees. 
The text of each letter is given in full and each supple- 
ments the other. I question if these letters were convinc- 
ing to all who read them in the morning papers of their 
respective dates, but I do n6t know that I could at that 
time have made the issue clearer, or the reason for the 
reversal of my decision more compelling. 

To the Reverend and Honorable the Trustees of Phillips 
Academy: 

Gentlemen — According to the intention, of which you have 
been apprized, of resigning my chair in the Seminary to accept 
the Presidency of Dartmouth College, I now present to you my 
formal resignation to take effect, if agreeable to you, on the 
first of May. My work for the academic year can then be brought 
to a close, and, as I am assured, without inconvenience to my 
colleagues. 

The decision through which, with your consent, I thus sever 
my connection with the Seminary, has been reached only after 
convincing proofs of personal duty. Each year of my service 
has bound me more closely to the Seminary by every tie of 

hensions were quieted by his declination of the same distinction. Yet all must 
recognize the cogency of the reasons which he has made public, to justify his 
change of decision. The Seminary, where for a dozen years he has labored in- 
defatigably and with the utmost popularity, has entered on a new era, free 
from the agitations and strifes which have long harassed and weakened it. No 
one of the faculty has more sturdily maintained the central citadel of the Prot- 
estant Reformation, "the right of private judgment," than Prof. Tucker, and 
he would have been the last to retire from the field while danger menaced. Now 
that peace has been permanently declared, however, he feels free to remove to 
another arena of activity; and neither his colleagues, nor his admiring students, 
nor the private friends whom he so largely numbers among our citizens, can inter- 
pose an objection when he avers that duty calls him into other work in new re- 
lations. They can one and all do no more than voice their disappointment, but 
with equal unanimity hasten to add their most cordial wishes for his success in 
the future. Of that there can be no doubt. 



ANDOVER AND DARTMOUTH 241 

loyalty, of friendship and affection and of enthusiasm for my 
work. The long period of controversy which has covered almost 
the entire term of my service, has had its greater compensations 
in the enlarging sense of spiritual freedom and in the joy of 
progress. I do not look upon the period as a time of delay or of 
waste. Still I had hoped and confidently expected that in the 
years of repose now before us I should be able to enter with my 
colleagues into the greater opportunities for securing positive 
results. 

It is with reluctance and in deep personal feeling that I put 
aside the hope and promise of these particular results, or seek 
to secure their equivalent under other conditions. But that it is 
my duty to go at the cost of these gains, as at the cost of many 
personal ties most precious to me, I cannot doubt. 

I desire to acknowledge my indebtedness to you for many 
unoflBcial acts of kindness and appreciation, and to express my 
profound sense of the fidelity, the consistency and the courage 
with which you have administered the affairs of the Seminary. 
I am, in the highest esteem 

Very respectfully yours 

William Jewett Tucker 

Andover, Mass., Feb. 1, 1893 

To the Trustees of Dartmouth College: 

Gentlemen — The letter of your committee, urging upon 
me, in your behalf, the reconsideration of my decision in regard 
to the presidency, is before me. I assure you that I am moved 
by your continued confidence, as you reaffirm your "original 
choice" and pledge to me "in case of my acceptance of the 
office of president the unanimous support of the board and the 
cooperation of all its members." 

And like representations from the faculty and from the ex- 
ecutive committee of the alumni touching the present necessities 
of the College, have made a deep impression on my mind. I may 
add, however, that my own personal solicitude, under the pro- 
tracted delay in filling the presidency, has been perhaps as great 
as that of any concerned for the welfare of the institution. 



242 MY GENERATION 

You may recall that in declining your election to the office 
a year since, I said at the close of my letter that "I shared with 
you the responsibility for the immediate future of the College." 
These words were written in the full sense of their meaning. 

And yet they have meant something quite different from that 
which I anticipated. I confidently expected that we should be 
able to avail ourselves of the service of some one of the alumni 
who had achieved success in educational affairs, or of some one 
outside of the alumni who could bring to the College a large 
educational knowledge and experience. 

But we have found that those of the alumni to whom we 
naturally turned were held in their places by reasons so much 
to their honor that we could not rightly seek to remove them, 
and we have also found that the present exigency demands in- 
creasingly the choice of an alumnus. It has now become as 
evident to me, as it has been to you, that further delay will 
seriously imperil the success of the College and thwart its pres- 
ent opportunity. 

In the rapid advances which are going on in educational 
methods, and especially in the adjustment of the traditional 
college to the broad work of the "higher education," Dartmouth 
has an immediate and honorable part to take, which, I agree 
with you in believing, can no longer wait a more extended search 
on our part for a president. 

I am prepared therefore to say, in deference to your judgment, 
that after the most careful deliberation I am now ready to 
accede to your renewed request, and to accept the presidency. 

Further remark would be unnecessary, had I not emphasized 
the reasons for declining the office a year ago. The reasons which 
I then urged still exist, and are in principle the ruling motive of 
my present as of my former decision. It was institutional loyalty 
which then held me at Andover; it is the same principle which 
now sends me to Dartmouth. 

Not that the year has wrought violent changes in either in- 
stitution, but while it has brought greater security and growth 
to the Seminary, it has left the College in unrelieved suspense 
and perplexity. One may easily exaggerate his personal value 



ANDOVER AND DARTMOUTH 243 

to the work of any institution, but when a choice of service is 
forced upon him, nothing remains to him as a loyal man but to 
acknowledge the greater need, and to act resolutely upon his 
conviction. 

I obey the present summons to the service of Dartmouth in 
the same spirit in which I remained at Andover, and in which I 
would still remain were the relative necessity the same now as 
then. And as I go I take with me an unabated affection and 
loyalty to the institution in whose service the most earnest 
years of my life thus far have been spent. 

In like manner I think that it may be rightly assumed that 
the method and plan of one's life may be changed without sur- 
rendering its general or even specific purpose. It seemed to me, 
as indicated in my former letter, that there were certain great 
social principles, necessary to the present development of so- 
ciety, which could be better wrought out through the Christian 
ministry than through any other medium. 

I think so still. I believe that the special opportunity to lead 
the way in social progress which presents itself now to this, 
now to that calling, lies to-day at the door of the ministry. The 
opportunity may not extend into the next generation, but it is 
present and urgent. 

Holding this opinion, I have been most reluctant to sever my 
connection with young men in training for the ministry. But I 
am aware that adherence to a personal plan or method may be 
carried to the point of self-will and narrowness, and react upon 
the very purpose which one is seeking to accomplish. 

The particular end which at a given time is besi; realized 
through one profession, cannot be remote from any other. In- 
deed, one of the most helpful signs of the present is the better 
distribution of the moral responsibilities of learning. 

While, therefore, in entering upon the broader work of general 
education, I shall address myself carefully to educational ques- 
tions, I shall in no wise lose sight of those more spiritual and 
human ends toward which the better life of our colleges and uni- 
versities is advancing. 

In my letter of resignation, now in the hands of the trustees 



244 



MY GENERATION 



of the Seminary, I have asked that my former connection with 
the Seminary may terminate on the 1st of May. If this proposal 
should meet with their acceptance, as I am already assured 
that it will suit the convenience of my colleagues, I shall be 
prepared to enter at that date upon such duties of the presi- 
dency as have not been delegated for the time being to Prof. 
Lord as acting president, under whom the College has been so 
successfully administered the past year. I shall be prepared to 
enter upon the full duties of the office upon my inauguration as 
president at the next commencement. I am, in high esteem 
toward you as my colleagues, most sincerely yours, 

William Jewett Tucker 
Andover, Mass.. Feb. 3, 1893 

The problem of the institutional development of the 
Seminary had not taken shape when I left Andover. Had 
such development been under way or even imminent, I 
might have felt it incumbent upon me to stay and take 
part in it. It was the misfortune of Andover that its in- 
stitutional development should have become a problem. 
In the order of progress, a constructive era should have 
followed close upon the termination of the controversial 
period. But the intervening period of financial depletion 
was so far prolonged that the institutional development 
when it came, came as a necessity rather than as an op- 
portunity. The difficulty, however, was in the situation; 
it was really organic. Without an institutional reorgani- 
zation there could be no adequate institutional leadership. 
The Faculty had no administrative power. The President 
of the Faculty had no seat on the Board of Trustees. The 
Trustees had the twofold duty of administering the affairs 
of the Academy and of the Seminary. During the long 
period of conflict which had engaged so closely the atten- 
tion of the Trustees, the Academy had received an unequal 



ANDOVER AND DARTMOUTH 245 

share of administrative oversight. It could now justly 
claim the greater attention. The administration of the 
Seminary called for economy to meet the indebtedness 
caused by the long litigation. The immediate demand was 
for restriction, not for expansion. And when the necessity 
for constructive effort was urged, there lurked in the back- 
ground of the discussion the decision of the Supreme 
Court which had left the Visitors practically undisturbed 
in their position, though under modified authority. The 
result of the conflict had not been a gain in institutional 
freedom corresponding to the gain in theological freedom. 
It was soon evident that the constructive period must 
wait for such changes, or such a change in administrative 
powers, as would allow the exercise of institutional leader- 
ship. Time would show the necessity for such a change, 
but not as it proved till other changes were also seen to be 
necessary. 

For several years the Seminary remained, so far as at- 
tendance was concerned, upon the high level on which it 
was left at the conclusion of the controversy. When the 
institutional development which had been assumed failed 
to take place, the decline in numbers began, and this de- 
cline gave rise to the vexing question of removal. There 
had been for some time a latent desire on the part of some 
members of the Faculty to remove to Cambridge, and 
effect a definite if not organic relation with Harvard Uni- 
versity. This desire was in accord with the general trend 
of the professional schools toward a closer affiliation with 
the Universities. The removal of Mansfield College to 
Oxford had indicated the institutional tendency of theo- 
logical education in England. 

I was frequently asked to express my opinion as an 



246 MY GENERATION 

alumnus on the question of removal from Andover. To 
these requests, I declined to make answer, because it 
would have been an unseemly thing for me to take part in a 
matter to which I had no longer any responsible relation, 
and also because, as I did not hesitate to say, the supreme 
question seemed to me to be not that of the removal of 
the Seminary, but that of the creation of a Board exclu- 
sively concerned with the affairs of the Seminary, to which 
this and all like matters could be referred. The creation of 
a separate Board for exclusive attention to the Seminary 
was happily brought about by legislative action, resulting 
in most beneficial effects upon the Academy, and as I 
doubt not will appear in due time upon the Seminary. 
Had I expressed the private opinion which I then held 
upon the question of locality I should have advocated 
removal, but removal to Boston instead of Cambridge. It 
seemed to me that a seminary of the assured traditions 
of Andover for scholarship, would find a more needed 
stimulus in the atmosphere of the city than in the at- 
mosphere of the University. A theological school seems 
to have more diflSculty in maintaining its distinctive pro- 
fessional aims under the diverting influences of a uni- 
versity than a law school or a medical school. The cata- 
logues of these various schools are in evidence at this point. 
As compared with his fellow student in law or medicine, 
the theological student is more sensitive to the lure of the 
purely academic. Where the professional stage of educa- 
tion is reached, I believe that education must become 
definitely and aggressively set toward the specific end of 
a given profession. And unless there has been some de- 
ficiency in the academic training of a student of theology, 
he cannot concentrate too resolutely upon his essential 



ANDOVER AND DARTMOUTH 247 

business. But the expression of this opinion has now no 
pertinency, unless it be in the general interest of more 
distinctively professional training for the ministry. I have 
accepted in good faith the decision of the new Andover 
trustees to remove to Cambridge, and to build up Andover 
in the new environment. 



CHAPTER IX 



The Dartmouth Period 
1893-1909 

MODERNIZING AN HISTORIC COLLEGE 

I 

"The Corporate Consciousness of the College" 

II 

The Traditions of Dartmouth 

III 

Reconstruction and Expansion 

IV 
The New Morale 

V 

An Advanced Policy Toward Non-Professional Graduates 

VI 

Professional and Public Relations during the Presidency 

VII 

Two Years of Crippled Leadership 



CHAPTER IX 

THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 

I 

"The Corporate Consciousness of the College" 

Before entering upon the course of the College adminis- 
tration at Dartmouth, I discuss briefly the general but 
underlying subject of the institutional life of a college. 
This inner life of a college viewed as an institution, its 
institutional spirit, is called in the quotation placed at the 
head of this section "the corporate consciousness of the 
college." As such it is the most vital and the most sensitive 
element in its effect upon college administration. It may 
make itself felt in ways which are most perplexing, but it 
may also be made use of for large and timely result. In any 
event it is an ever present force, never to be ignored and 
never to be neglected. 

Our American colleges and universities are, in a peculiar 
and most significant sense, institutions. They represent 
more distinctly and more impressively than anything else 
the institutional life of the country. Some of them were 
chartered before the organization of the Government. 
The charters of all, at whatever period granted, or whether 
conferred on private or public foundation, breathe the 
same spirit. They are more than charters of rights. They 
try to express in various ways the public interest, a sense 
of the social necessity for which they would provide, the 
obligation of the State to the higher education. These 
chartered obligations are generously supported by public 
or private benefactions. Gifts are quickly transmuted into 



250 MY GENERATION 

sentiment. Interest develops into pride. Colleges and uni- 
versities absorb very much of the public feeling which 
finds expression in the attitude of the people toward the - 
establishments of the Old World. In the absence of thef 
ceremonials of a State Church, the academic ceremonial 
is the most impressive of all public displays, and is likely 
to so remain, unless we become a military nation. 

It is not difficult to explain the place which the college 
or university holds in public sentiment. It stands far in 
advance among the things which have a recognized spir- 
itual value, using the term in its broad meaning. The sub- 
stance of the college does not consist primarily in the 
popular estimation in its physical properties, or even in 
its curriculum, but in its idealism. It is the institutional 
spirit which gives public value to an academic institution. 
A college administrator is expected to be more than a 
financier, more than a schoolmaster. He must embody in 
some tangible and expressive way "the corporate con- 
sciousness of the college." 

Before making further use of this quotation, I will give ' 
its connection. It is taken from a communication by Dr. 
Kirsopp Lake to the "Harvard Quarterly,'* after attend- | 
ing his first Commencement at Harvard, 1914. This char- 
acterization of the spirit of the American college is very 
striking and very significant as rendered by so eminent 
an academic authority. Such an interpretation could not 
have been given by one less versed in the genius of the 
earlier and later European universities. 

If we compare [he says] Harvard Commencement with the 
Dies of a Dutch University, or even with Commemoration at 
Oxford, two things emerge as representing points in which the 
American college of to-day has an advantage over anything 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 251 

which exists in Europe at the present time; and the historical 
imagination is reminded by them of the Middle Ages when the 
great universities of the old world were in the full power of their 
youth. These things are the consciousness of the Alumni of their 
membership in the University, and the spirit of religion — in 
the real sense of the word — which inspires the corporate con- 
sciousness of the College. The college man seems impressed to 
a wonderful extent with a lively sense that he has been called 
with a great vocation. To most of them this is much more vivid 
than the feeling that they have received some sort of teaching 
which will be useful to them in their personal careers. ... So 
it was in the Middle Ages. . . . The college men of to-day can 
rarely speak or understand the language of the Middle Ages, but 
they seem often to have been "stung by the splendor" of the 
same thought as inflamed the hearts of the men of those days. 

It is not necessary that one be versed in mediaeval 
customs, or possessed in high degree of the historical 
imagination, to understand Dr. Lake's interpretation of 
the spirit of the American college. According to this inter- 
pretation, it is the distinction of the college that it creates 
a "corporate consciousness," which in turn is capable of 
creating in the college man " a lively sense that he has been 
called with a great vocation." When the college man of 
to-day really enters into this consciousness, and is really 
touched by the sense of the vocation with which he has 
been called, he is "stung by the splendor" of the same 
thought that inflamed the hearts of the men of the Middle 
Ages. 

Although this exposition of the more spiritual type of 
American academic life is heightened somewhat by the 
historic imagination of the writer, it is in essential harmony 
with the view of the idealistic school of our own educators. 
In their view, the college stands for more than finds ex- 
pression in any technical or cultural output. It represents 



252 MY GENERATION 

also in high degree the play of those deeper human forces 
which have such freedom and scope in the whole range of 
human life. In 1909, at the Inauguration of President 
Nichols at Dartmouth, Woodrow Wilson, then President 
of Princeton, gave an address in which he made the fol- 
lowing acknowledgment of the real nature of our academic 
communities. The address was given before representa- 
tives from all the leading colleges and universities of the 
country, and evidently met with their approval. 

I have been thinking, as I sat here to-night, how little, except 
in coloring and superficial lines, a body of men like this differs 
from a body of undergraduates. You have only to look at a 
body of men like this long enough to see the mask of years fall 
off and the spirit of the younger days show forth, and the spirit 
which lies behind the mask is not an intellectual spirit: it is an 
emotional spirit. 

It seems to me that the great power of the world — namely, 
its emotional power — is better expressed in a college gathering 
than in any other gathering. We speak of this as an age in which 
mind is monarch, but I take it for granted that, if that is true, 
mind is one of those modern monarchs who reign but do not 
govern. As a matter of fact, the world is governed in every gen- 
eration by a great House of Commons made up of the passions; 
and we can only be careful to see to it that the handsome pas- 
sions are in the majority. 

A college body represents a passion, a very handsome passion, 
to which we should seek to give greater and greater force as the 
generations go by — a passion not so much individual as social, 
a passion for the things which live, for the things which en- 
lighten, for the things which bind men together in unselfish 
companies. The love of men for their college is a very ennobling 
love, because it is a love which expresses itself in so organic a 
way, and which delights to give as a token of its affection for 
its alma mater some of those eternal, intangible gifts which are 
expressed only in the spirits of men. 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 



253 



While, however, the institutional spirit which pervades 
our colleges is recognized by all, and accepted by most as 
vitally inherent, it is looked upon by not a few as danger- 
ous in its tendencies, and in its more extreme forms sub- 
versive of the highest ends of college training. I take note 
of the essential criticisms. The most common and perhaps 
most pertinent criticism is to the effect that the institu- 
tional spirit is institutional rather than educational, and 
may become positively anti-educational. One critic writing 
in a book review in the "Nation" declares flatly, "As 
long as loyalty to college is considered a virtue, you will 
get little loyalty to college education. They are unalter- 
ably opposed. Students cannot be taught to think while 
their minds are glued together. Shatter the virtue of loy- 
alty to your college and in your college and you have 
neutralized the centripetal force which draws the man to 
a mediocre norm." And still more definitely an editorial 
in the "Seven Arts" affirms that the American colleges, 
as regards the literary interests of the country, and es- 
pecially the women's colleges, are not sending forth any- 
thing like the number of creative workers that would be 
expected of them. Of one woman's college in particular — 
"write me for the name if you wish" — of the very high- 
est standing, which has sent forth some thousands of 
graduates and post graduates, not one of them has ever 
entered upon any creative or artistic labor. 

I am not blind to the conditions which from time to 
time give rise to strictures like these, nor do I overlook 
the element of truth in the general criticism of which these 
are fragments. Nevertheless I believe that all such criti- 
cism is based upon a misconception of the function of the 
college in the educational system. It is not the supreme 



254 MY GENERATION 

oflBce of education at the period covered by the college to 
develop the individuality of the student, but rather his 
humanity, using this term in its strict educational sense. 
In this sense it is more desirable that a college student 
shall be thoroughly humanized than that he shall be pre- 
maturely individualized. The humanizing process consists 
in the introduction of mind to mind under mutually stim- 
ulating conditions, in the give and take of the physical 
and intellectual life, in the stimulus of competition, in the 
sense of comradeship in the intellectual adventure into 
life. Exception to the value of this process is to be taken 
in favor of the well defined artistic temperament. I doubt 
if our colleges have much to offer to the must-be artist 
or even to the would-be artist. Tennyson said that he 
got nothing from Cambridge; and yet Cambridge had 
doubtless far more to offer to an incipient poet than to 
one born with an equal aptitude for the other so-called 
fine arts. The distinction appears when one contrasts the 
college experience of Tennyson with that of most of the 
great parliamentary orators. Apart, however, from those of 
the artistic temperament whom the college can seldom 
reach to advantage, there are those, very few in compari- 
son, who can profit at once by the individualizing process. 
They are ready for contact, not with or through others, 
but altogether by themselves with those high and separat- 
ing subjects which lie within the range of college study; 
and for their ambitions and capacities provision should 
be made. An unsatisfied seeker after truth of any kind, 
who outruns his fellows but finds no welcoming compan- 
ionship among teachers and guides, is a sad sight. I repeat 
the necessity for provision for the man of exceptional 
individuality in our colleges. But this type of student 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 255 

does not constitute the problem of college training. The 
concern for individuality usually expresses itself in some 
undue concession to a partial or prematurely specialized 
talent, with the result to the individuals so treated that 
they are intellectually stranded in later life; they fail to 
make connection with men and with events. They are not 
for the most part those who best meet the tests of the 
professional schools, or even of the specialized graduate 
school. Experience has shown beyond dispute that the 
higher education at the college stage is best mediated 
through institutions; and the institutional process is not 
set directly to the task of individualizing the student mind. 
It by no means follows, however, that the principle of 
associated life and activity upon which the college rests, 
cannot be made a stimulus to personal effort in scholar- 
ship, in some respects the most powerful which can be 
applied. I believe that there are incentives and com- 
pulsions in the spirit of a college which have not as yet 
been put to the highest uses. College sentiment has left 
scholarship too much to the individual. But the individual 
impulse to scholarship has not proved strong enough in 
the average student to reach any high result. The scholar 
of the individualistic type, whether such by instinct or by 
persistent habit, is a comparatively rare person. Accepting 
Phi Beta Kappa rank as the minimum standard of actual 
scholarship, it would not be possible to assign more than 
one fifth of an ordinary college class to this rank, and of 
the number included in this proportion probably one half 
should be rated as diligent students rather than as scholars. 
But there are very many men in the colleges who are 
capable of reaching the results which can be gained only 
through scholarship, and who may be expected to reach 



I 



256 MY GENERATION 

these results, provided it can be made clear to them that 
scholarship is one of those indisputable things which a 
college expects a man to contribute as his part in the dis- 
charge of the common obligation. The spur of competition 
is purely individualistic. The sense of accountability is 
part of the social sense. It may be incorporated into the 
spirit of a college and applied where the stimulus is most 
needed. To-day the men who most need this special 
stimulus are the strong and capable men who are in danger 
of making a miscalculation in regard to college values. 
From the strictly individualistic point of view, the invest- 
ment of power in scholarship may not seem to them to be 1 
the most profitable investment. Let the question be j 
changed. Is there any other investment of power, open to 1 
a college student, so profitable to his college, so profitable 
to his country .f^ 

In view of the failure of the purely individualistic ap- 
peal for scholarship, I believe that the appeal should be 
urged increasingly through the institutional or "corporate " 

I 

spirit of the colleges. This appeal is wider and more un- 
deniable. The really significant task of the college is to 
make the strong and capable men under its training 
realize in time the social value of scholarship. Devices 
for quickening the lazy, or for helping the weak, are mere | 
matters of college discipline. The rescue of a strong man 
from the misuse, or from the under-use of his power, is 
the most satisfying and usually the most rewarding of all 
college endeavor. Every such man, who takes on the habit 
of mind of the scholar, gives reality and incentive to the 
pursuit of scholarship. He brings the spirit of the college 
to bear upon the issue. I am well aware that the tradition 
of the American college does not point the way to indi- 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 257 

vidualistic scholarship. Dr. Lake intimates as much in 
regard to the miiversity of the Middle Ages. The "Satur- 
day Review" has made a like admission in regard to the 
English universities: "The main intention of Oxford and 
Cambridge is not even scholarship and high thinking, 
though without these we truly believe that the nation will 
perish. Their main intention is to encourage a spirit among 
the young men of England which will make them in- 
stinctively conscious of a call to account very strictly to 
the world for such talent or power as a man may have." 

This exposition of the ground and motive of English 
scholarship, including the honor system, is worthy of 
special note, for it discloses the normal appeal of the col- 
lege in behalf of scholarship. The appeal is frankly and 
broadly human, not individualistic. It may seem more 
distinctly moral than intellectual, I think that it is; but 
for that very reason it reaches most directly and most 
effectively "the mind of the college." 

Another criticism, less significant but not to be over- 
looked, is to the effect that the institutional spirit tends 
to provincialism. It unduly magnifies the small college. 
It detaches the academic from the public mind. 

The danger to the small college from provincialism is 
obvious. The small college creates a certain intensity of 
view which is supported by an equal intensity of character. 
But in this concentration of institutional life there may 
lie, and usually does lie, a degree of intellectual and moral 
force quite out of proportion to numerical size or to finan- 
cial resources. What Mr. Bryce has said in regard to the 
small nations applies with like reasoning to the small col- 
leges. In fact he has made the application of his thought 
to them. The struggle incident to poverty, the extra effort 



258 MY GENERATION 

required to counterbalance the lack of abundant instruc- 
tion or equipment, often the remoteness from stimulating 
associations, which necessitates the larger use of self- 
contained powers, seem to produce a type of academic 
character of marked value to the public life of the country, 
and not infrequently of striking originality. The determin- 
ation of the representative small college to reach and main- 
tain the academic standard is proof of the enlarging 
effect of its institutional spirit. In place of expansion, 
there is often noticeable a remarkable insistence upon 
technical standards. The small college may be small under 
temporary restricting conditions, but it is usually intent 
upon making connection with the standardized academic 
system. There was more than humor in the reported say- 
ing of the director of a small railroad, who wanted to 
connect with the New York Central in the days of Com- 
modore Vanderbilt. To the rather contemptuous question 
of the Commodore, "How long is your little road.'*" he 
had the ready answer, "What does that matter? It's just 
as wide as yours is." Underneath the humor of the situ- 
ation and apparent to the Commodore, was the essential 
fact about the road — it could connect, it had the stand- 
ard gauge. 

Of the assumed detachment of the academic from the 
public mind, it is hardly necessary to make serious mention 
at the time I am now writing. The American college has 
never stood in the public esteem for pedantry, but there 
have been times when it has borne the burden of its 
so-called inutilities. Those times were past even before 
the events preceding the War. The college curriculum 
turned more and more toward affairs. College men met 
in the theories of the classroom many of the scientific 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 259 

and economic problems of business and industrialism, 
before they were confronted by them in their practical 
details. Since the Government has laid its hand upon all 
available constructive or executive talent in the country, 
Washington has become the meeting place on equal terms 
of the business manager and the academic expert. Perhaps 
no discovery has been more agreeable to the public than 
the practical capacity of the non-expert members of the 
college faculties. The appointment, for example, of the 
Professor of Classical Philology at Dartmouth as the 
Executive Secretary of the Council of National Defense 
for New Hampshire has been in no way exceptional. 

I do not know of any present detachment of the aca- 
demic from the public mind of sufficient account to invite 
criticism, unless it may be found under the guise of a cult 
which is coming to be known as "intellectualism." The 
term itself, when relieved of its aspirations to superiority, 
stands for a legitimate and fine expression of the academic 
mind at its best — the absence of prejudice and sentimen- 
tality, freedom from partisanship, moral as well as intel- 
lectual independence, a certain high and undaunted spirit 
of adventure, and above all, loyalty to the pure light of 
reason. The present affectation of the term is by no means 
a distinctive academic vice. "Intellectuals" so-called or 
self-styled are much in evidence. There is a very consid- 
erable appropriation of the name to identify those who 
hold "advanced" positions on the shifting intellectual 
frontier, and who represent to themselves and to those 
likeminded some fancied enlightenment. In some cases, 
they belie the name they assume by advocating theories 
charged with sentiment rather than informed by reason. 
The craving for the intellectual thrill is simply intellectual 



26o MY GENERATION 

emotionalism. Unfortunately, the academic mind is not 
altogether proof against this new style of intellectual 
provincialism, but I doubt if it will long survive in our 
colleges and universities, where the natural and free ex- 
pression of the intellectual life is fatal, in time, to all affec- 
tations or assumptions of superiority. 

The most serious criticism, amounting at times to a 
charge in the case of some specified college, is that colleges 
as institutions are subject to the dangers and evils of 
institutionalism. It cannot be denied that the charge in 
some form has occasional justification, or that there are 
constant liabilities in the institutional development of 
colleges. But it is on the whole remarkable that the pro- 
gress of collegiate education has shown so few examples 
of well defined institutionalism. Corrective tendencies 
have been continually at work from within, and often 
corrective measures have been applied with breadth and 
courage. I recall some of the greater dangers and the means 
of escape or of prevention. This review is confined to the 
independent colleges and universities. The liabilities of 
the state colleges and universities are for the most part 
of a different sort. 

It must be confessed that it was a dangerous experiment 
to entrust arbitrary power (under charter limitations) in 
perpetuity to a self-perpetuating body. But the founders 
of the early colleges followed without hesitation the usage 
of their time. Extraordinary powers were conferred upon 
the corporate members, involving not only the control of 
all properties, but the sole authority to elect, and if deemed 
necessary "to displace or discharge" any or all officers of 
instruction and government. It is to the credit and honor 
of the public sense of integrity and justice which then ob- 



THE DARTiMOUTH PERIOD 261 

tained, that so dangerous a system could be carried on for 
one or more centuries with so little friction, or miscar- 
riage of justice, or loss of self-respect among those under 
authority. It is still further to the credit of these self- 
perpetuating Boards of Control that they have so far 
relinquished voluntarily such exclusive exercise of these 
arbitrary powers as they have been able to divest them- 
selves of, without violation of their chartered obligations. 
The transfer within the last generation to so large a degree, 
of the governing function of the colleges to their alumni, 
through the device of alumni representation, has done 
very much to insure the liberality and freedom of college 
government. There remains, however, the question of the 
complete and responsible adjustment of faculties to col- 
lege administration. The advance in the recognition of 
faculty rights, both of individuals and of the general body, 
has been very marked. It now seems to be in the way of 
reaching at least a working adjustment. But the question 
of rights is really subordinate to that of responsibilities, 
and no satisfactory solution of this question is yet in view. 
In consequence the present relation of faculties to gov- 
erning boards is unseemly. It rests upon the basis of 
separate and of possible antagonistic interests. Professors' 
"unions" exist for defensive, or possibly aggressive pur- 
poses. They recognize the principle of "class conscious- 
ness." They organize the professional element in academic 
life against the already organized institutional element. 
Doubtless this state of things brings about, as I have said, 
for the time being a practical working adjustment, but 
from the nature of the case it cannot be permanent. The 
question of rights, that is, should not be allowed to settle 
into the most sensitive question connected with college 



262 MY GENERATION 

administration. The only proper question which can be 
associated in any form with administration is that of per- 
sonal or official responsibility. To bring the status of pro- 
fessors up to this level the initiative must be taken by 
the body which now holds the ultimate responsibility. It 
is confessedly a greater problem to incorporate faculties 
into the responsibilities of administration than it was to 
incorporate alumni into that particular relation, for the 
question of professional rights is not involved in the case 
of the latter. But the problem is in no sense insoluble. And 
whenever a suitable way is found to confer upon faculties 
a fair share of the rights of responsibility for the general 
government of colleges, I believe that contention for all 
other rights real or assumed will cease to vex the academic 
world. There can be no possible academic freedom beyond 
that which is implicit in academic responsibility. 

•The colonial, and in general the historic, colleges have 
either escaped or outgrown the dangers of ecclesiastical 
institutionalism. I think that this is more remarkable 
than that they should have been able to relax the grasp 
of the close corporation. The religious motive was so , 
dominant at the outset, and the ecclesiastical environ- j 
ment so close, that a different result might have beenf 
expected. And yet it must be remembered that great as 
was the hold of religious authority there was very great 
jealousy in behalf of religious freedom. Dartmouth, so far 
as I recall, owing to reasons already stated, was the only 
one of the earlier colleges to prescribe that the majority 
of the governing Board should be laymen, but the guar- 
antee of religious toleration was inserted in all the charters 
of the contemporary colleges, and was usually set forth 
in very explicit terms. The tending away from ecclesiasti- 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 263 

cism has been one of the marked features of academic de- 
velopment. Of the early colleges which had their origin in 
denominational enterprise all now report themselves as 
"non-sectarian" unless required by their charters to 
maintain the original denominational control. And in the 
ease of these few colleges, it should be remarked that for 
the very reason of nominal sectarian control, they take 
unusual pains to make their actual non-sectarianism evi- 
dent. Sectarianism is a characteristic of the newer colleges 
which must for the time rely upon denominational sup- 
port for their existence. Their sectarianism does not repre- 
sent the spirit of propaganda. In due time these colleges 
will doubtless become non-sectarian in the same way in 
which the older colleges of like religious origin have passed 
into that estate. It is seen that sectarianism does not con- 
duce to academic religion. Traditions may be cherished, 
forms of worship preserved, and the spirit of the inherited 
faith guarded, but academic religion must have freedom 
and breadth. And these qualities are practically insured 
in the religious life of all colleges. Whatever difficulties the 
religious problem may present in college administration, 
the essential difficulty does not arise out of sectarianism 
or ecclesiasticism. 

The danger that the colleges and universities may be- 
come " institutionahzed " through wealth is yet to be 
tested. The liabihty of such a result is comparatively 
recent. The foundations of great endowment at the out- 
set, like Leland Stanford and the University of Chicago, 
fall practically within the twentieth century. Johns 
Hopkins led the way (in 1876) among the institutions 
highly endowed at the start, with its relatively modest 
foundation of $3,000,000. Harvard, still the wealthiest 



264 MY GENERATION 

among the universities, with the possible exception of 
Columbia, at a present valuation of $34,000,000 in pro- 
ductive endowments, was rated at $5,000,000 in 1889. 
The advance of Yale from less than $1,000,000 at that 
date to over $21,000,000 at the present time is perhaps 
the most rapid of any. The era of great endowments falls 
within the last three decades. Previous to 1890, the amount 
of productive funds held by all of the New England col- 
leges and universities was less than $12,000,000; the 
present amount is about $100,000,000. 

This increase in the holdings of the colleges and uni- 
versities has been so rapid that any moral result is con- 
cealed in the very process of acquisition. We speak of the 
expansion of the colleges, but hardly as yet of their cap- 
italization. But the time is not far off when this recent 
development must be considered in its educational tend- 
encies and effects. Some of our educational institutions 
under private endowment have already become in a sub- 
sidiary way very considerable financial institutions. 

There are two tendencies in the financial development 
of colleges and universities which are already suflBciently 
noticeable to suggest the need of more watchful observa- 
tion. First, the tendency to transform the governing 
Boards into financial boards. With the rapid increase of 
endowments this result is inevitable — at least to the 
extent of insuring their proper care. The finances of a 
college must be wisely administered, and in these days 
few men apart from financiers are capable of making 
suitable investments. But the indirect effect of this change 
in the personnel of the governing boards is to make 
the alumni and other friends of a college think of this 
new obligation as their chief fimction. The criticism has 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 265 

already been passed upon the nominations made by the 
akimni of some of our universities, that they represent 
bankers quite out of proportion to educators, — a criti- 
cism which recalls the question, partially discussed, as to 
the further responsible use which can be made of faculties 
in shaping the policy of the college. The educational and 
financial policies are really inseparable. It is doubtful if 
the demands of the educational can be met through dele- 
gated powers. To repeat what I have already said, I 
think that the way must be found to satisfy both of these 
responsibilities through one and the same board, as was 
practically the case before the financial responsibility 
assumed such large proportions. 

A second tendency is to be seen in the growing reliance 
of some colleges upon educational boards of trust for 
financial aid. Probably most colleges which allow them- 
selves this use of what may be termed professional financial 
aid would regard the use as altogether exceptional, to be 
accepted in an emergency, or to be employed as a stimulus 
toward raising some large fund. But some colleges seem 
to be acquiring the habit of such reliance. These boards 
of trust are assumed to be free from all controlling in- 
fluences over the colleges. It would seem difficult, how- 
' ever, to dissociate influence altogether from money given 
in large amount, or in repeated benefaction. The intro- 
duction of the boards of financial aid into the educational 
system, with large capital and highly organized, is an 
innovation upon the financial method of the self-govern- 
ing colleges. 

It should be said that the Carnegie Pension Fund 
(Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching) has a 
partial justification in this regard in the fact that it is so 



266 MY GENERATION 

largely under the control of representatives of the colleges 
and universities which are the objects of its beneficence. 
But I think that it was a relief to many when it was pro- 
posed to operate the fund on an insurance basis, after 
being released from present obligations. I felt that Dr. 
Pritchett deserved great credit for the courage and sa- 
gacity involved in this proposal. When the question of 
applying to the Carnegie Foundation was before the 
Dartmouth Trustees, I did not vote for the application, 
but I did not oppose it, as I was just leaving the presi- 
dency, and could not mature the plan which I was de- 
vising as a substitute. I also hesitated to oppose it because 
I had reason to believe that a general pension fund would 
be more agreeable to some of the faculty than a college 
pension fund. But I regretted none the less the enrollment 
of the College among the beneficiaries of the Fund. I 
thought it a matter of honorable congratulation that the 
Trustees of Brown were necessitated by the charter of the 
university to forego this aid, and to maintain at this par- 
ticular point, though at much cost, their entire financial 
independence. 

The plain fact is, that it is just because our colleges and 
universities are institutions, that they have the liabilities 
which belong to all such reservoirs of power. They must 
be guarded from the dangers which inhere in their con- 
stantly augmenting strength. Hence in college adminis- 
tration there is as much need of moral sensitiveness as of 
intellectual alertness. But the greater danger to our col- 
leges and universities does not lie in any tendencies to their 
misuse as educational institutions, but rather in the con- 
stant temptation to their insufficient or inferior use. The 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 267 

emphasis may fall upon the wrong place or be suffered to 
rest too long in what had been the right place; a timely 
intellectual or moral enthusiasm may not be carried to a 
legitimate result ; the opportunity may be allowed to pass 
for the sure conservation of institutional power through 
its expansion. The function of the university, for example, 
in its relation to the past has been defined as consisting 
in providing "the means by which the highest culture of 
one generation is best transmitted to the ablest youth of 
the next." This, it seems to me, is an insufficient interpre- 
tation of the relation of a university to the past, and one 
which has often given barren results. The great obligation 
of the past is not the transmission of its culture, but the 
transmission of its creative spirit, which may find as an 
imperative duty the task of recreating its culture, which 
in turn may necessitate the destroying of more than it 
may preserve. In like manner the attempt to utilize college 
enthusiasm may go no further than to arouse "college 
spirit"; it may utterly fail to develop that fine esprit de 
corps which, as Mr. Wilson says, is the product of the 
"handsome passions," that in their free play can alone 
guarantee nobility of thought and action. Or still further, 
an institution may subject itself to the humiliation of 
intellectual loss, or to the chagrin consequent upon any 
sense of intellectual waste, when it is unable to put a 
right valuation upon the new subject-matter of the higher 
education, or is unable to organize it into the "college 
discipline." 

I am aware that what I am now writing may seem like 
reflections growing out of the experience of the years of 
college administration. Doubtless the feeling which per- 
vades these words is enhanced by my experiences and 



268 MY GENERATION 

observations. But it was the very sentiment regarding the 
institutional life of a college which I am now expressing, 
that was the convincing and assuring motive in my ac- 
ceptance of the Dartmouth presidency. The "situation" 
with its risks and possibilities was as clear then as it now 
appears in retrospect. Viewed in the light of institutional 
possibilities the opportunity was plain, albeit a venture of 
faith. Professor Foster, head of the department of history, 
has told me that about the time of the close of my ad- 
ministration he called, in an examination on the colonial 
period, for a comparison between the early history of the 
college and its latest development. One student remarked 
incidentally, comparing Dr. Wheelock and myself, that 
both "were gamblers by instinct." I was as much 
pleased as amused with the insight of the student. Dr. 
\Mieelock certainly took, according to the view of the 
average man, a great chance when he ventured on his 
errand into this northern wilderness. My errand was 
undertaken under very different conditions, but measured 
by the definite object to be achieved which was to de- 
termine its success or failure, this latter venture of faith 
had in it to the ordinary, and to the interested onlooker, 
a large element of chance. This object was nothing less 
than to attempt to give to the College its possible in- 
stitutional development — to develop it to its full insti- 
tutional capacity. The colleges with which Dartmouth 
had been most intimately associated in its early history — 
Harvard, Yale, and Princeton — had gradually drawn 
away in the pursuit of their own educational ideals. Har- 
vard and Yale had already defined themselves as univer- 
sities, and Princeton was taking steps to reach the same 
end. What further development should Dartmouth at- 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 269 

tempt, consistent with its traditions, and possible of real- 
ization? No alumnus of Dartmouth cherished the desire 
to see the College become a university. Apart from the 
adverse sentiment which the attempt of the State (in the 
Dartmouth College controversy), to convert the College 
into a university had created, it was clearly seen that the 
limitations of its environment would make the attempt, 
so far as any satisfactory result might be concerned, quite 
impracticable. But the purpose was legitimate and prac- 
ticable, and the opportunity was present, for Dartmouth 
to expand and to seek to fill to the full the college ideal. 
This was the purpose entertained, altogether distinct from 
the ambition to realize the university ideal, but in itself 
honorable, and satisfying. 

The means for carrying out this purpose, so far as they 
fell within the province of administration, were both 
moral and material. To my mind the emphasis in the 
choice of means rested at three points. First, Dartmouth 
was in a peculiar sense an historic college. Its history was 
its great asset, both moral and material. It was necessary 
that its history should be capitalized at its full value. To 
this end the College of the present was to be brought into 
vital contact with the College in its origin and early de- 
velopment. The essential thing was to open wide the 
channel for the transmission of the spirit of the College. 
Dartmouth had no advantage in the transmission of cul- 
ture. Her advantage, and it was very great, was in the 
well-nigh unrivaled possession of an originating spirit at 
once creative, adventurous, and charged with spiritual 
power. The significance of this heritage will appear in the 
succeeding section of this chapter. 

Second, the creation of a high college sentiment, not 



270 MY GENERATION 



1 



mere college spirit, was essential to the full institutional 
development of the College. I have placed much stress 
upon the educational value of the human element during 
the college stage. It is of special value in creating the in- 
stitutional spirit in constructive periods. "The mind of 
the college" can be lifted at such times above the ordinary 
causes of enthusiasm and set upon the growths and ad- 
vancements of the college itself. Such periods produce a 
fine community of feeling among members of the faculty, 
students, and alumni. The institutional effect of growth 
in numbers is not to be minimized, but the real signifi- 
cance of numbers lies in what they represent. Assuming 
quality as a fixed necessity, the most desirable result is the 
broadening of the constituency of a college. In the present 
case, the object sought in the increase of the student body 
was the nationalization of Dartmouth. 

The third point upon which emphasis was placed was 
that any plan of reconstruction and expansion must be 
commensurate with the existing opportunity. This as 
compared with those already mentioned was the material 
point, but it involved the whole question of educational 
advance. The contrast is often drawn between teaching 
and equipment to the disparagement of the latter. There 
may be reason for this disparaging contrast, but it was 
entirely out of place in that period of educational recon- 
struction which followed the introduction of the sciences 
and of the scientific method. Teaching became in large 
degree a question of equipment. Colleges had to be re- 
built. The college plant had an educational value which 
no instructor could despise. No increase of salary could 
make amends for meager facilities. Such was the situation 
at Dartmouth at the beginning of the period of recon- 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 271 

st ruction and expansion. It was altogether an educational 
crisis. Next to a spirit of hospitality toward the new sub- 
ject-matter of the higher education was the necessity of 
making adequate provision for it; and this demand, when 
met, necessitated in turn the rehabilitation of the material 
of the older discipline. 

I will not anticipate what is to be said more in detail as 
I describe the modernizing process which went on at 
Dartmouth, but I may fitly say at this point that I quickly 
became aware of the dynamic force latent in the College, 
as I sought to bring it up to its full institutional capacity, 
and I may repeat what I have already strongly urged, that 
college administration has to do with spiritual quite as 
much as with material forces. The college administrator, 
whatever may be his other qualifications, must be able to 
recognize the meaning and to feel the force of the "cor- 
porate consciousness of the college." 

■ .n 

n 

The Traditions of Dartmouth 

" I would have an Inscription over the door of your Building — Founded by 
Eleazar Wheelock: Re-founded by Daniel Webster." Judge Hopkinson to Pres- 
ident Brown in a letter announcing the decision of the Supreme Court in the 
Dartmouth College Case. (Inscribed on Webster Hall.) 

In contrast with the educational foundations of the 
latter half of the nineteenth century established under 
the stimulus of the scientific spirit, those of the eighteenth 
century seem to have been dominated by other than 
strictly educational motives. The dominating influences 
of this century were religious and political. Dartmouth dif- 
fered in no wise from the colleges of this or an earlier date 
in respect to the general influences affecting the higher 
education, but it differed from them widely in the cir- 



I 



272 MY GENERATION 

cumstances in which these influences were operative. The 
rehgioiis motive not only acted with pecuHar intensity in 
the inception of Dartmouth, but it gave to the movement 
a certain adventurous character. Dartmouth was by dis- 
tinction a pioneer college — a religious venture into an 
untried field of education as well as into a remote region. 
All the other colleges were within or near the existing 
centers of population. 

Dartmouth was "a voice crying in the wilderness" tG|j 
the denizens of the wilderness. But it was because of this' 
separateness of object and remoteness of place that its 
"voice" was heard so far off — in the streets of London, 
in the churches throughout Great Britain, at the court of 
the king. The fortune of Wlieelock's Indian School, the 
incipient college, bearing with it the fortune of the in- 
domitable and intrepid Wheelock, constitutes "the ro- < 
mance of Dartmouth." It gave, as I have said, to the 
founding of the College the character of religious adven- 
ture; and as such it stamped upon the College the mark of 
the adventurous quite as much as of the religious. Dart- 
mouth has not retained above other colleges of its genera- 
tion the religious spirit, but it has retained I think some 
of the distinctive characteristics of its adventurous origin. 

Dartmouth differed from the other colleges in another 
very important circumstance. Within fifty years from its 
founding it was obliged to pass through a struggle for 
its legal existence. The reestablishment of its chartered 
rights which had been in jeopardy, has been fitly termed 
its refounding. The circumstance attending the refounding 
was altogether of another character from that attending 
its founding, and produced an entirely different effect. It 
marked the sharp transition from a religious to a legal 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 273 

environment. It is difficult to estimate which circum- 
stance had the greater effect upon the institutional life of 
the College. But the influence of the latter circumstance 
was no more strictly educational than that of the former. 
The legal contention brought the College into close rela- 
tion to the various chartered interests of the country, not 
only educational but to those involving property rights. 
It served to nationalize the College. And it added, not 
immediately but in due time, the reputation of Mr. 
Webster to its vital assets. 

The founding and the refounding of Dartmouth are in 
themselves events of such unusual interest in the history 
of educational foundations, they represent such diverse 
influences, and they are associated with men so wide 
apart as Wheelock and Webster, but of such unusual 
quality and so entirely one in their relation to the College, 
that I dwell somewhat in detail upon these beginnings of 
Dartmouth, especially upon the services rendered by its 
founder and refounder. 

To understand the educational bearing of the religious 
motive that actuated Wheelock, and that created the 
atmosphere in which he was able to develop his plans 
and carry on his work, we must take due account of that 
wide and deep spiritual movement which pervaded Eng- 
land and America during the middle of the eighteenth 
century. The remarkable fact about this movement, more 
remarkable even than its intensity, was its scope. It 
reached out beyond the bounds of purely religious con- 
cerns into the social, philanthropic, and even political 
interests of the times. In his "History of England in the 
Eighteenth Century " (vol. 2, chap, ix) Lecky passes this 
judgment upon the scope of the movement: 



274 MY GENERATION 

Although the career of the elder Pitt and the splendid vic- 
tories by land and sea that were won during his ministry form 
unquestionably the most dazzling episodes in the reign of George 
II, they must yield, I think, in real importance to that religious 
revolution which shortly before had been begun in England by 
the preaching of the Wesleys and of Whitefield. The creation of 
a large, powerful, and active sect, extending over both hemi- 
spheres and numbering many millions of souls was but one of 
its consequences. It also exercised a profound and lasting in- 
fluence upon the spirit of the Established Church, upon the 
amount and distribution of the moral forces of the nation, and 
even upon the course of its political history. 

The religious life of WTieelock was not the outcome of 
this revival. It had an independent origin and its own 
personal development. Wheelock was not a convert or 
disciple of the religious leaders in England; he was their 
contemporary. His student life at Yale coincided with that 
of the Wesleys at Oxford, and preceded by a little that 
of Whitefield; but he sympathized with their religious 
aims and was prepared to welcome Whitefield and to 
cooperate with him on his visits to this country — a 
friendship and cooperative service which were more than 
repaid by Whitefield. Wheelock 's Indian School was well 
under way at the time of Whitefield's first visit to this 
country, and at once awakened his interest. He raised 
considerable sums of money for its support in New York 
and Philadelphia, and suggested to Wheelock the plan of 
sending Samson Occom, the first fruits of the school, to 
England to raise funds for its support. It was through 
Whitefield that Wheelock was brought into personal re- 
lations by correspondence and through his agents, with 
Lord Dartmouth and those members of the Established 
Church who were identified with the evangelical revival. 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 275 

and whose minds were as much stirred by the missionary 
enterprises associated with it, into which Wheelock's work 
among the Indians fitted in a most timely way, as they 
were by the greater secular events of the time. The fre- 
quent reference in the correspondence between Wheelock 
and Lord Dartmouth and other London patrons to the 
"Kingdom of God" was no expression of religious cant, 
but rather of a most real and vital interest in what they 
believed to be the greatest matter of human concern. In 
the light of these facts, the statement in Chase's History 
of Dartmouth seems to be entirely justified that "without 
the active assistance of Whitefield and his friends it would 
not have been possible for Wheelock to develop and carry 
out his extensive plans. Nothing therefore is truer than 
that Dartmouth College is peculiarly a child of the Great 
Revival." 

What is termed the romance of Dartmouth is in truth 
a spiritual romance. It began in the appeal of the idea 
embodied in Wheelock's Indian School to the spiritual 
imagination of the Mother Country. It took shape and 
color in the visit of Samson Occom to England, where he 
was received not only with curious interest, but with 
ardent sympathy and eager cooperation, as evidenced 
in the subscription of ten thousand pounds in behalf of 
the school, the list headed by His Majesty with a sub- 
scription of two hundred pounds, and containing the 
names of three thousand individuals and churches.^ The 
romantic character of the origin of the College appears 
more clearly in the fact that as the mirage of the higher 
education of the Indians disappears, there rise in place of 

^ For names of subscribers (about twenty-five hundred) see list in appendix 
of Smith's History of Dartmouth College. (Houghton Mifflin & Company, 1878.) 



I 



276 MY GENERATION 

Wheelock's Indian School the substantial walls of Dart- 
mouth College, fitly bearing the name of the statesman 
as well known in his time for his friendship for the colonies 
as for his missionary zeal. And if anything further were 
needed to complete the "romance of Dartmouth," it may 
be found in the reflection that none of these conditions 
attending its origin could have happened except in the 
decade in which they occurred. Ten years from the date 
of Occom's visit to England and six years from the date of 
the Charter of the College, the colonies were at war with 
the Mother Country. Dartmouth was the ninth and last 
of the colonial colleges. The College might have come into 
existence under other auspices, but it would have been 
another college, bearing another name, located elsewhere, 
possessed of other traditions. 

The relation of the College to the name it bears is not 
limited to the gift of the name. The name was justified 
by the personal interest of Lord Dartmouth, the second 
Earl, in the purpose of Eleazar Wheelock as set forth in 
the Indian School, and by his most influential service 
in furthering the project. His influence was in harmony 
with his political attitude to the Colonies while Secretary 
of State for the Department of America, and with his 
religious views as an "Evangelical" of the Church of 
England. The unique fact about the relation is that it 
survived the War of the Revolution, and passed over into 
the generations following. As the present Lord Dartmouth, 
the sixth in the succession, remarked on leaving the Col- 
lege after his visit in 1904, "I am going back from Dart- 
mouth to Dartmouth, between which there has never 
been a break for one hundred and thirty-five years." I do 
not know of a like continuous relation between an Amer- 




^ i 

o a 

K O 

Ph ^ 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 277 

ican college and an English house. This reciprocal relation 
has been frequently acknowledged. In 1805 Edward Legge 
(the House of Dartmouth sprang from the Legge family), 
then Dean of Windsor, afterwards Bishop of Oxford, 
received from the College the degree of Doctor of Divinity ; 
and in 1860 William Walter Legge, fourth Earl of Dart- 
mouth, received the degree of Doctor of Laws. However, 
no degree was conferred in person till the visit, to which 
I have referred, of William Heneage Legge, sixth Earl of 
Dartmouth. This degree, of Doctor of Laws, was given in 
connection with the formalities attending the Laying of 
the Corner Stone of the New Dartmouth Hall by Lord 
Dartmouth. More recently the relationship has been hap- 
pily brought to view in England in the circumstance 
indicated in the following communication from Lord Dart- 
mouth to the editor of the "Alumni Magazine": 

November 19, 1918 
Sir: 

I enclose a programme of the Installation ceremony of Lord 
Robert Cecil as Chancellor of the University of Birmingham. 
It may not be uninteresting to your readers to know that I was 
privileged to take part in the procession, attired in the robes 
presented to me by Ex-President Nichols. 

The installation took place on the day following the signing 
of the armistice, and the appearance of a Dartmouth gown in 
the very centre of England seemed to me to be a very appro- 
priate indication of an alliance that made the signing of the 
armistice possible. 

Yours Dartmouth 

While, however, educational institutions may have their 
spiritual origin in great movements of thought and faith, 
they do not come into actual existence except through 
correspondingly great personal agencies. Eleazar Wheelock 



278 MY GENERATION 

was emphatically the Founder of Dartmouth College. To 
him the College owes its existence because he was an 
embodiment of the creative spiritual influences of his 
generation, but also and none the less because of the cre- 
ative and organizing powers of mind which enabled him 
to conceive plans in true proportion, and which caused 
him to brook no obstacle in the way of their accomplish- 
ment. 

As one of his successors, I have on two occasions given 
my impression of the personality of Dr. Wheelock, and of 
my feeling toward him. As the occasions were such as to 
enhance whatever value may have attached to my words, 
I quote them in their connection. The first occasion was 
the laying of the corner stone of the present Dartmouth 
Hall by the present, the sixth Earl of Dartmouth. Among 
the exercises connected with this ceremony was included 
a visit to the grave of Wheelock in the College Cemetery. 
The following brief address was given at his grave: 

We are indebted to Professor Richardson, the chairman of 
the Committee on Arrangements, for the introduction of the 
fine touch of sentiment which brings us here, at the grave of 
Eleazar Wheelock, to begin our march to the site of Dartmouth 
Hall. It is also in accordance with his suggestion that a brief 
word is spoken here by myself as the successor of Dr. Wheelock. 

The gift of the eighteenth century to the colleges of America 
was the gift of the religious spirit. For other endowments our 
debt is small. The ministry of wealth to education had not then 
been accepted, and of organized learning there was little to give. 
The learning of the time was chiefly pedantry or culture, not 
distinctively power. 

The religious spirit was the great educational endowment, 
and it was very great, because it was creative. It took possession 
of fit men and taught them to lay foundations upon which men 
and states might afterward build securely and broadly. 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 279 

Eleazar Wheelock was a man fitted to the uses of this creative 
and energizing spirit. My conception of him is that of a man of 
broad understanding, of quick and steadfast imagination, and 
of an imperious will, which gave him in unusual degree the 
power of initiative; but I think of him more distinctly as a man 
able to receive and to make room for those mighty influences 
which were in his time stirring the hearts of willing and capable 
men. Eleazar Wheelock was no opportunist, but he was alive in 
all his nature to the most serious demands and opportunities 
of his age. It would perhaps be fanciful to assume that, as a col- 
lege student, the first fellow on the Bishop Berkeley foundation 
at Yale, he caught the full significance of the great bishop's 
scheme for education in America. Still it is true that no man ever 
carried that scheme so near to its realization as did Eleazar 
Wheelock. In his early ministry there came among the churches 
of this country the quickening power of George Whitefield. 
Many opposed Whitefield and his doctrine. Wheelock welcomed 
him and accepted his message. He became in his own person a 
recognized part of the "Great Awakening." The visit of White- 
field had been preceded in the providence of God by another 
visit of a very different kind, which at once suggested, and 
finally directed, the course of future service. While he was still 
a young pastor and teacher there came to Wheelock's study 
an Indian, twenty years of age, asking for advice and help. 
Wheelock took him to his home as pupil, almost as son, and after 
four years sent him out equipped for work among the churches. 
Samson Occom was to Wheelock the embodiment of an idea, 
an idea which became a purpose, — I had better say, a passion; 
an idea for which he was ready to endure toil and sacrifice, 
an idea for which he was quick to plead with the churches and 
legislatures of his country, an idea which he was not ashamed 
to present at the court of his sovereign. 

It was twenty-six years from the visit of Samson Occom to 
the signing of the charter of Dartmouth College. At almost 
threescore, Eleazer Wheelock left his home and church and 
people, where he had dwelt for thirty-five years, and built his 
altar and pitched his tent in this wilderness. He had but ten 



28o MY GENERATION 

years in which to accomplish his work. It was an old man's task. 
The founding of this College is a witness to the power of a 
courageous, persistent, indomitable faith. 

It would be unjust to this man, standing beside his grave, to 
deny his faults, faults which inhered in his temperament. Great 
men do not ask us to forget their faults. This man was great 
enough to carry them to the end and make his goal. 

The writer of his epitaph has caught the Spirit of his life. Be- 
ginning as a record it ends as a challenge. I have often read it 
to invigorate my own soul. But it was written not alone for his 
successors in the office which he created, nor yet for workers in 
the cause for which he gave his life, but as the writer says, even 
for the wayfaring man who may pass his grave. I rehearse it 
therefore in your presence. 

By the gospel he subdued the ferocity of the savage; 

And to the civilized he opened new paths of science. 

Traveler, 

Go, if you can, and deserve 

The sublime reward of such merit. 

The second occasion was the Inauguration of Dr. 
Nichols as my successor in the presidency. On this occa- 
sion I received permission from the Trustees of the College 
to introduce into the Inaugural Exercises a special recog- 
nition of the relation of succeeding Presidents to Dr. 
Wheelock, under the term "The Wheelock Succession" — 
a term designed to express our peculiar personal as well 
as official connection with the Founder and first President 
of the College: 

President Nichols, I am permitted by the courtesy of the 
Trustees to introduce you at this point to a somewhat peculiar, 
because personal, succession, into which each president of the 
College enters upon his induction into ofiice. The charter of 
Dartmouth, unlike that of any college of its time so far as I 
know% was written in personal terms. It recognizes throughout 
the agency of one man in the events leading up to and including 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 281 

the founding of the College. And in acknowledgment of this 
unique fact it conferred upon this man — founder and first 
president — some rather unusual powers, among which was 
the power to appoint his immediate successor. Of course this 
power of appointment ceased with its first use, but the idea of a 
succession in honor of the founder, suggested by the charter, 
was perpetuated; so that it has come about that the presidents 
of Dartmouth are known at least to themselves as also the suc- 
cessors of Wheelock, a distinction which I am quite sure that 
you will appreciate more and more. For Eleazar Wheelock was 
the type of the man, the impulse of whose life runs on in men, 
creating as it goes a natural succession; a man whose power of 
initiative is evidenced by the fact that at sixty he was able to 
found this College in the wilderness; a scholar by the best 
standards of his time, the first Berkeley Fellow at Yale ; broad 
and courageous in his mental sympathies, a leader in the pro- 
gressive movements of his age; and of so high and commanding 
a devotion of purpose that it brought him to an accomplished 
end. . . . 

Dartmouth, as you know, has been singularly fortunate in 
the return into its own life of the fame and service of some of 
her greater sons, singularly fortunate also in the abounding and 
unflinching loyalty of all of her sons; but I believe that the 
greatest possession of the College has been and is still the spirit 
"^ of Eleazar Wheelock in so far as it has been transmitted through 
his successors. I think therefore that the term "The Successors 
of Wheelock" is worthy of public, if not of official recognition. 
Unwittingly Wheelock himself originated the expression in the 
very thoughtful provision which he tried to make for those of 
us who were to come after him. "To my successors," he says 
in one of the last clauses of his will, not to the Trustees nor to 
the College, but "to my successors in the presidency I give and 
bequeath my chariot which was given me by my honored friend, 
John Thornton, Esquire, of London; I also give to my successors 
my house clock which was a donation made me by my much 
honored patrons, the Honorable Trust in London." 

It is no matter of surprise, as we recall the utter indifference 



282 MY GENERATION 

of each generation to those things of its daily handling which 
are likely to become historic, that these perquisites of the suc- 
cession have long since disappeared. But happily the intention 
of Wheelock was caught and held in permanent shape. When 
John Wentworth, governor of the Province of New Hampshire, 
returned from the first commencement, he sent back, possibly 
as a reminder of a deficiency on that occasion, a silver punch- 
bowl bearing this inscription — 

"His Excellency John Wentworth, Esquire, Governor of the 
Province of New Hampshire, and those friends who accom- 
panied him to Dartmouth the first Commencement in 1771, in 
testimony of their gratitude and good wishes, present this to 
the Reverend Eleazar Wheelock, D.D., and to his successors in 
that office." 

This bowl, which, as I now produce it, seems so inadequate 
to the draughts of that time, for this very reason serves us the 
better as a kind of loving-cup. 

In the spirit of the original gift, but after the fashion of the 
later use, I now transfer it to you with the good will of the long 
succession, and in the personal hope that it may be many, many 
years before you will have the opportunity to transfer it to 
your successor. 

President Nichols responded as follows: 

Dr. Tucker, through the years which may be given me to 
serve this college worthily, I shall guard and cherish this symbol 
of the Wheelock Succession for the mighty hands through 
which it has passed, hands which have held high the sacred 
torch of knowledge to light the homes, the workshops, the 
streets of the world, that none should grope in darkness, nor 
lose his way, nor run into any kind of danger because of mental 
or moral ignorance. I shall cherish this symbol of the Wheelock 
Succession the more, sir, because it has come into my hands 
from you, whom I have known and loved as my chieftain. 

The introduction of the ceremony of the "Wheelock 
Succession" into the exercises attending the Inauguration 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 283 

of the Presidents of Dartmouth was designed to give 
reahty and spiritual significance to the romantic founding 
of the College, which because of this character was in 
danger of being left behind to abide by itself as a spiritual 
romance, detached more and more from the formal and 
institutional life of the College. By a singular fate, the re- 
founding of the College had seemed to intervene to give 
a new as well as more substantial basis. There was a sense 
in which the founding and refounding were really con- 
tradictory. The occasion for the refounding of the College 
lay in the miscarriage of one of the provisions of the 
original foundation. According to this provision, the duty 
devolved upon Wheelock of appointing his successor — 
"to nominate, appoint, constitute, and ordain by his last 
will such suitable and meet person or persons as he shall 
choose to succeed him in the Presidency of said Dart- 
mouth" — the person so appointed, however, to continue 
in oflSce "so long and until such appointment shall be 
disapproved by the Trustees of Dartmouth College." Re- 
calling the circumstances of the time, this provision ap- 
pears to have been natural, if it did not prove to be wise. 
The immediate future of the enterprise seemed to lie in 
the mind from which it emanated. Wheelock was at the 
time sixty years old and worn with hardships and trials. 
He had but a limited time in which to give direction and 
consistency to his purpose. Who could have a better right 
or an equal fitness for making choice of his successor.'* 

But I have no doubt that in this provision of the charter of 
Dartmouth College granting to Eleazar Wheelock as the founder 
the right to appoint his successor, and in the results which fol- 
lowed the exercise of this right, we have the origin of the Dart- 
mouth College Case. Unwittingly the charter created the con- 



284 MY GENERATION 

dition for such a controversy. Unwittingly Dr. WTieelock filled 
out the condition by the appointment of his son, John Wheelock, 
then Lieutenant Colonel in the Continental Army, serving on 
the staff of General Gates in New Jersey, probably the best 
choice he could have made. ... If, however, we eliminate any 
one or all of the personal characteristics which may have been 
contributory to the controversy, it is quite easy to see that there 
were sufficient elements of contention in the situation itself. On 
the one hand the inheritance from the administration of the 
elder Wheelock was entirely that of a personal and paternal 
government. The younger Wheelock was simply asked to 
take his father's place. There were no other traditions attach- 
ing to the place than that of personal government. Nobody at 
the time had any other conception of the administration of 
the college. When other and broader ideas came in, after the 
lapse of two or three decades, especially through changes in the 
Board of Trustees, then occasions arose and multiplied for dif- 
ferences, disagreements, and contentions. The changes in the 
Board of Trustees during the first fifty years of the college from 
the date of its founding, 1769, to the decision in the Dartmouth 
College Case, 1819, were very marked. This Board, consisting 
of twelve men, was made up at the first in about equal parts, of 
the political associates of Governor Wentworth in New Hamp- 
shire, and of the ministerial friends of Dr. Wheelock from Con- 
necticut. The War of the Revolution falling within the first 
decade changed almost entirely the composition of the Board. 
Two only of the charter members remained through the ten 
years' administration of the first president. Governor Wentworth 
withdrew at the outbreak of hostilities in 1775. The Connecticut 
members gradually withdrew, owing in part to their local inter- 
ests in their own colony. The college thus separated from its 
English patrons, and from many of its supporters in the other 
colonies, became for the time isolated. Dr. Wheelock was obliged 
to rely more and more upon his personal friends, among whom 
may be mentioned John Phillips of Exeter. Vacancies in the 
Board as they occurred were filled by friends, and in two cases 
by relatives. The Board of Trustees in existence at the death of 



• 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 285 

the elder Wheelock in 1779, which urged the succession upon 
his son, was in reahty, though apparently without design, so 
organized as to perpetuate the family control of the college. 
Within twenty years the names upon the Board as then con- 
stituted disappear, with two exceptions, and thereafter quite a 
different type of trustee comes into prominence — Nathaniel 
Niles, Judge of the Supreme Court of Vermont, elected in 1793; 
Thomas W. Thompson, Member of Congress, in succession, in 
both branches, 1801; Timothy Farrar, Judge of the Court of 
Common Pleas of New Hampshire, 1804; Elijah Paine, Esquire, 
of Vermont, 1806; Charles Marsh, Esquire, U.S. District At- 
torney and Member of Congress, 1809 — an acquisition of legal 
ability which gave the Board a distinctly legal character, and 
which peculiarly fitted it, as occasions might arise, for contro- 
versial action.^ 

The occasion for open conflict between the President 
and the majority of the Trustees did not arise until after 
some years of friction in the college community and 
throughout the college constituency, and of suppressed 
conflict within the Board. The President had now been 
in office thirty-five years, the last fifteen years of which had 
been a period of uninterrupted contention. It is necessary 
to keep this fact in mind in order to understand the sudden 
and vigorous outbreak of hostilities. The state of feeling 
which had been engendered, was intensified by the pub- 
licity to which each side resorted in giving out charges 
and counter-charges. The charges on either side were as 
follows. In his memorial to the Legislature of New Hamp- 
shire, its President Wheelock charged that the majority of 
the Trustees had "forsaken its original principles [of the 
charter] and left the path of their predecessors"; that by 

* Quotation from my address on the "Origin of the Dartmouth College Case," 
given before the New Hampshire Bar Association on occasion of its celebration 
of the Centennial of Chief Justice Marshall, Manchester, February 4, 1901. 



286 MY GENERATION 

improper "means and practices they [had] increased their 
number to a majority controlling the measures of the 
Board"; that they had "applied property to purposes 
wholly alien from the intention of the donors "; that they 
had "transformed the moral and religious order of the 
institution by depriving many of their innocent enjoyment 
of rights and privileges for which they had confided in 
their faith"; and that they had "broken down the bar- 
riers and violated the charter by prostrating the rights 
with which it expressly invests the presidential office." 

In the counter-charges the Trustees claimed that Pres- 
ident Wheelock had sanctioned in printed documents 
known as the "Sketches" and the "Memorial," "a gross 
and unprovoked libel upon the institution"; that he had 
set up " claims which in their operation would deprive the 
corporation of all its powers"; that he had "been guilty 
of manifest fraud in the application of the funds of Moor's 
School" in foisting an assumed Indian upon the Scotch 
fund; and that he had "in various ways given rise and 
circulation to a report that the real cause of the dissatis- 
faction of the Trustees with him was a diversity of re- 
ligious opinions between him and them, when in truth 
and in fact no such diversity was known or is now known 
to exist, as he has publicly acknowledged before the com- 
mittee of the Legislature appointed to investigate the 
affairs of the College." 

In reviewing these charges and counter-charges one can 
but feel how insufficient they were in their generalities to 
bear the weight of the subsequent contention. So it ap- 
peared at the time to the clear and sagacious mind of 
Jeremiah Mason. The particular act of President Wheelock 
which seems to have carried the contention to the break- 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 287 

ing point, was the direct appeal in his "Memorial" to the 
Legislature of New Hampshire, that it would make such 
^'organic improvements and model reforms in its system 
and movements [of the College] as under Divine Provi- 
dence will guard against the disorders and their appre- 
hended consequences." To the object, avowed or implied, 
in this appeal, the Trustees made answer by deposing the 
President, according to the authority granted them by 
the charter and by electing the Reverend Francis Brown 
in his place. Of course this action closed the contention 
between President Wheelock and the Trustees; but it 
carried the controversy into politics and opened the way 
into that larger contention which was to become in due 
time the Dartmouth College Case. The political party 
then in opposition was quick to take advantage of the 
situation and at the next session of the Legislature, June, 
1816, secured the passage of an act "to amend the charter 
and enlarge and improve the corporation of Dartmouth 
College," increasing the number of Trustees to twenty- 
one, and changing the name of the College to Dartmouth 
University. A Board of Overseers was also added and the 
necessary legislation, both restrictive and expansive, was 
introduced to convert the College altogether into a State 
University. Although the Trustees were hardly prepared 
for such drastic and subversive action to be enforced by 
the power of the State, they did not shrink from the un- 
equal contest. Their action took the form of a suit before 
the Superior Court of New Hampshire to recover the 
records and seal of the College, which had passed into 
possession of the University through the defection of 
Judge Woodward, the Secretary and Treasurer of the 
Trustees. This suit raised at once the question of the con- 



288 MY GENERATION 

stitutionality of the act of the Legislature establishing 
the University. The case was argued with great ability 
by Attorney-General Sullivan and Ichabod Bartlett in 
behalf of the State, and by Jeremiah Mason and Jeremiah 
Smith in behalf of the College, Mr. Webster, who as 
junior counsel had kept somewhat in retirement during 
the procedure, making a brief closing argument. The de- 
cision of the court was unanimously in favor of the State, 
upholding the constitutionality of the legislative act 
establishing the University. 

The adverse decision of the court revealed the serious- 
ness of the contest upon which the College had entered 
for the restoration of its chartered rights. What added not 
a little to the disheartening effect upon the friends of the 
College was the attitude at this time of many ofificers and 
graduates of other colleges, who, now beginning to realize 
the common danger, were fearful of graver results if the 
case should be appealed to the Supreme Court of the 
United States. They felt that they might not be affected 
by any like decision in the courts of their own States, and 
preferred to rest in this uncertainty rather than to join in 
an attempt to gain the assurance of a general and perma- 
nent security. The Trustees and their counsel, though not 
altogether surprised at the decision, and still undaunted, 
were somewhat doubtful as to the nature of future pro- 
ceedings, especially in regard to the scope of the appeal. 

It was at this juncture that Mr. Webster really entered 
the case, bringing to bear upon it all his legal resources 
and throwing into it the whole weight of his personality. 
From this time on it was his case. He chose the strategic 
point for the appeal to Washington. He reorganized the 
case to meet the enlarged conditions of its new environ- 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 289 

ment. Associating Judge Hopkinson, of Philadelphia, 
with him, he prepared the case with scrupulous care. 
Nothing was wanting to the completeness of the argu- 
ment, nothing to the force of its application, not even the 
sincere touch of personal emotion which carried it to the 
hearts of the judges. When the decision of the Supreme 
Court was rendered, reversing that of the State court, 
and reestablishing the College in its chartered rights, 
Mr. Webster stood forth as the victorious champion of 
what had been a mightily imperiled cause. Before the 
country had grasped the scope of his argument, it was 
caught by the splendor of his courage. Something of this 
high distinction of courage fell upon the College. The 
Dartmouth College Case under Mr. Webster's manage- 
ment gave to the College a courageous and chivalrous as- 
pect, corresponding to that adventurous aspect which it at 
first assumed from the religious heroism of Dr. Wheelock. 
In the year 1901 the College observed the centennial of 
Mr. Webster's graduation.^ It was an unusual academic 
event, but the relations of Mr. Webster to the College both 

1 Through a striking coincidence, the founding and the refounding of the Col- 
lege, that is, the conferring of the Charter and the decision of the Supreme 
Court, fall upon dates just fifty years apart, so that any academic commemo- 
ration of either event will naturally include the other. Thus, before the War, the 
year 1919 had been kept in mind as the date for the celebration of the one 
hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the charter and the one 
hundredth anniversary of the decision of the court. But two occasions arose 
meanwhile (one entirely unexpected) which brought the.se two events in turn 
vividly before the College. The first was the celebration of the centennial of Mr. 
Webster's graduation (1901); the second three years later marking the laying of 
the corner stone of the new Dartmouth Hall and the visit of the Earl of Dart- 
mouth to the College. Memorial volumes were carefully prepared, edited by 
Ernest Martin Hopkins, then Secretary to the President, recording the various 
speeches and addresses, and narrating the incidents of interest attending the 
celebrations. 

The Webster Centennial contains the very comprehensive but most discrimi- 
nating oration by Governor (then Congressman) Samuel W. McCall on " Web- 
ster's Career"; papers of Professors John K. Lord and Charles F. Richardson; 



290 MY GENERATION 

personal and professional were so unusual as to make the 
event appropriate and significant. In my introductory 
words in explanation of the occasion, I sought to interpret 
the feeling of the College to Mr. Webster: 

The observance of the Centennial of Mr. Webster's gradu- 
ation from College is an academic event of its own kind. I am 
not aware of an instance in which a college has taken note in a 
formal way of the graduation of any of its alumni. The motive 
which has led us to observe this event is so natural and evident, 
that our action invites, I think, neither criticism nor imitation. 
We have not sought to introduce a custom. No college or uni- 
versity may see fit to celebrate a like event in its history. We 
may have no occasion to repeat these observances under other 

conditions. 

The relation of Mr. Webster to his College, his living and his 
posthumous relation, is unique. It is doubtful if the name of any 
educational institution in the land is so inseparably blended 
with the name of a graduate, or even of a founder, as is the 
name of Dartmouth with that of Daniel Webster. The story of 
the founding of this College by Eleazar Wheelock is a romance, 
the great educational romance of the eighteenth century. The 
story of its "refounding" by Daniel Webster is written in law, 
the law of the land since 1820. Had Mr. Webster died imme- 
diately after the Dartmouth College decision he would have left 
the College imbedded in the national life. The after years of his 
personal fame were of almost equal service to the College. His 

and speeches by Governor Jordan. Edwin Webster Sanborn, Esq., Judge David 
Cross, Dr. Edward Everett Hale, Senator Hoar of Massachusetts, and Chiet 

Justice Fuller. , tt » ^ • xi, mi , 

The Laying of the Corner Stone of the New Dartmouth Hall contains the illu- 
minating Historical Address of Professor Francis Brown on "The Origins of Dart- 
mouth College"; the various speeches of the Earl of Dartmouth; the Corner 
Stone Ode" of Wilder D. Quint; and the responses at the Banquet by the Earl 
of Dartmouth; Charles T. Gallagher, Esq., on the "Dartmouth and \\ashington 
Arms"- Dr. Charles A. Eastman on "The Native American for whom Dart- 
mouth College was founded " ; Governor Bachelder of New Hampshire; President 
Eliot of Harvard; President Tyler of William and Mao'; and the Honorable 
Elihu Root on "Samuel Kirkland, Founder of Hamilton College: Eleazar 
Wheelock's Pupil and FeUow Worker in Indian Education.' 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 291 

reputation, his influence, his memory became a part of our in- 
stitutional assets. We cannot tell to-day whether we owe more 
to Mr. Webster for what he did or for what he was. 

And yet in this relation of Mr. Webster to the College, unique 
as it is, there is nothing unnatural or exaggerated. He belongs to 
us because he was one of us. There was nothing to set him apart 
or separate him, except size. He was "to the manner born." A 
New Hampshire boy, he never thought of entering any other 
college than Dartmouth. And once here he found all that he 
needed at that stage of his development. The Dartmouth of 
Mr. Webster's time was quite abreast of the still older colleges 
with which it is associated. During the decade which included 
the greater part of his collegiate course, Dartmouth graduated 
three hundred and sixty-three men, Harvard three hundred and 
ninety-four, Yale two hundred and ninety-five, and Princeton 
two hundred and forty. Mr. Webster referred in his argument 
to Dartmouth as a "small college." It was a small college, but 
not small as related to its neighbors, nor insufficient as related 
to its work. It gave Mr. Webster what he was capable of re- 
ceiving in the way of instruction, stimulus and opportunity. 
And when the time came for him to repay his debt to the College 
he simply did his duty. He did no more than he ought to have 
done, no more than any graduate ought to do for his college 
with a like opportunity before him and with equal resources at 
his command. It was natural, too, that he should continue to 
love his college to the end, and rejoice that he was a part of it, 
as natural as was his love of kindred and of nature. I dwell upon 
the simplicity and constancy of Mr. Webster's feeling toward 
the College, because these qualities explain so largely our feeling 
toward him. His loyalty was commensurate with his power of 
service, his affection was as deep as his nature. . . . 

It may be pardonable to add to this word of explanation the 
reminder of the fact that as we celebrate this past event, we find 
ourselves in the presence of a living personality. No man of his 
time has borne the gradual transfer from memory to tradition 
with so little loss. No name out of his time is so familiar to-day 
as his name. Mr. Webster was never loved by the people at large 



292 MY GENERATION 

as some men have been loved. Popular affection as it went out 
toward him grew hesitant in the approach and became awed in 
his presence. It did not quite dare that passionate fondness 
which some men allow in their success ; it did not dare that com- 
passionate tenderness which some men would welcome, which 
he might have welcomed, in decline and defeat. But in one 
respect the personal influence of Mr. Webster surpassed and 
continues to surpass that of all other men, namely, in his in- 
fluence over the ambitions of young men. During his life-time 
Mr. Beecher had many imitators. Mr. Webster's power was 
deeper, more searching, more creative. It touched the center 
and core of personal ambition, stirring young men to make the 
most of themselves and to act with most effect upon others. 
Mr. Webster has been and still is a potent influence in sending 
men to college, into the law, and into politics. 

Measured in broader terms his influence is vital to-day in the 
thought and feelings of men in respect to the country. We have 
learned, we have begun to learn, to think about the country in 
his terms, and to feel about it as he felt. His conceptions were so 
great that they could find room only in his own mind. They 
belong to the United States of to-day, not to the nation of his 
time. Thus far Mr. Webster is the only man who has compre- 
hended the American people. Until a greater American than he 
shall arise, he will live in the still unfulfilled destiny of the 
Republic. 

In following the extraordinary course of events which 
carried the case of the College to Washington we may not 
allow ourselves to lose sight of the events which were at 
the same time taking place at the College itself; nor may 
we allow our absorbing admiration for the courageous 
bearing of Mr. Webster, amounting as it did to a sane 
audacity, to overshadow an exhibition of equal courage 
of a different type in the person of the youthful President 
of the College. W^hen the trustees deposed President 
Wheelock, they turned to Francis Brown, for three years 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 293 

after his graduation a tutor, and then pastor of the church 
in Yarmouth, Maine, as the most competent man for the 
succcession. He was but thirty-one years of age, and but 
ten years out of college; but they believed that they knew 
the man and dared to trust him with what was not only 
a great but at the time a very unusual responsibility. They 
could not have foreseen, and certainly he could not have 
foreseen all the consequences which were to follow the 
deposition of the President, but they knew that in taking 
this step they incurred grave risks. It seemed, neverthe- 
less, necessary and wise to incur them; but the wisdom of 
their action could be justified only by the wisdom of their 
choice of a successor to the deposed President. I am con- 
vinced that with any other man than President Brown in 
the position the cause of the College would have failed. 
The situation was full of pitfalls. Any misstep would have 
been prejudicial to the case and might have made the 
legal contention of the College untenable. President Brown, 
in company with his associates, Professors Adams and 
Shurtleff, held the local position not only firmly, but 
without prejudice to the efforts of the counsel for the 
Trustees. The oflScial correspondence of the President 
with the Governor of the State was conducted with rare 
diplomacy, and his correspondence with the President of 
the University, a still more delicate business, with equal 
skill. The relations between College and University were 
kept within the bounds of a reasonable courtesy. And 
meanwhile the college exercises went on with regularity. 
The students were held to their duties with a certain 
enthusiastic devotion. There was but slight decline in 
numbers during these dark and uncertain days. The 
presidency of Dr. Brown lasted but five years, from 1815 



294 MY GENERATION 

to 1820. The number graduating within those years was 
one hundred and forty-three — but fifty less than in the 
previous five years, and but seventeen less than in the five 
following. Certainly there was no decline in quality. Rufus 
Choate graduated in 1819 (the year of the decision of the 
Case), and George P. Marsh in the year after. Meanwhile, 
the loyalty of the President could not be shaken, nor his 
courage. At the time of greatest confusion he was offered 
the presidency of Hamilton College with twice his salary. 
It was no temptation to him. The Legislature passed an 
act inflicting penalties upon him and his associates if they 
continued to fulfill their duties as college oflBcers. They 
continued without a break in the discharge of their duties. 
While the College was before the courts, the position at 
Hanover was held without flinching. Any other course 
would have been fatal to the whole cause. As Trustee 
Marsh, then a member of Congress, wrote the President 
from Washington — "With your abandonment would ex- 
pire the remaining hopes of the friends of Dartmouth." 
That was an impossible alternative to Francis Brown. 
The struggle cost him his life, but he died at his post, sur- 
viving only a year the victory of Mr. Webster at Wash- 
ington. He belongs by every right within the heroic period 
of the history of the College. Nothing could be more fitting 
than the tablet to his memory (see page 295), placed 
within the Hall which bears the inscription to Wheelock 
and Webster. 

I have made much account of the traditions of Dart- 
mouth because they retain their influence. They have 
entered into the institutional life of the College. They 
form a part of the Dartmouth discipline. Unconsciously, 
doubtless, to the average undergraduate, but none the 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 295 



FRANCIS BROWN, S.T.D. 

PRESIDENT OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE 

1815-1820. 

A MINISTER OF THE GOSPEL 

IN NORTH YARMOUTH MAINE 

CALLED TO THE PRESIDENCY OF 

THE COLLEGE IN THE CRISIS 

OF ITS AFFAIRS WHEN THE 

STATE LEGISLATURE THREATENED TO 

CHANGE THE CHARTER OF THE COLLEGE 

AGAINST THE WILL OF THE TRUSTEES 

HE ACCEPTED THE CALL AS 

THE WAY TO DUTY. 

FOR FIVE YEARS UNCHECKED BY OBLOQUY 

UNDAUNTED BY DIREST POVERTY 

UNENTICED BY OFFERS OF 

PERSONAL ADVANCEMENT 

UNDISMAYED BY THE 

ADVERSE DECISION OF THE STATE COURTS 

HE CONDUCTED THE AFFAIRS 

OF THE COLLEGE 

UNTIL A DECISION OF THE 

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 

ESTABLISHED THE VALIDITY OF 

THE EARLY CHARTER. 

WORN OUT BY THE STRUGGLE 

HE DIED JULY 27th 1820 
IN HIS THIRTY SEVENTH YEAR. 

HIS UNTIRING LABORS 

HIS ADMINLSTRATIVE ABILITY 

AND HIS HIGH PERSONAL CHARACTER 

GAINED FRIENDS FOR THE COLLEGE 

AND HELD THE STUDENT BODY 

FIRM IN ITS ALLEGIANCE TO 

THE INSTITUTION WHICH 

HE HAD THOUGHT WORTHY THE 

SACRIFICE OF HIS LIFE. 

IN RECOGNITION OF HIS MERITS 

THIS TABLET IS ERECTED ON THE 

CENTENARY OF HIS ACCESSION 

BY THE 

ASSOCIATION OF ALUMNI OF 

D4RTM0UTH COLLEGE. 



296 MY GENERATION 

less truly, they are a vital element in the intellectual and 
moral atmosphere which surrounds him. Their ultimate 
effect, however, is manifest in the graduates of the College. 
At certain periods they have been influential in determin- 
ing the choice of a profession. At all times they assert 
themselves in the determination of the qualities which are 
accounted of most value in practical life. I have been 
greatly interested in observing how surely the traditions 
of the College, if by any chance they have been submerged 
under the passing enthusiasm of an undergraduate gener- 
ation, reappear in the graduate of after years. The great 
traditions are so persistent that they seem at times mo- 
notonous, but they never cease to be vital. 

m 

Reconstruction and Expansion 

It is an abrupt transition from the epoch when Dart- 
mouth was making its traditions to the time when, in 
common with the historic colleges, it entered upon what 
I have termed the modernizing process — the era of re- 
construction and expansion. But as this review is auto- 
biographical, not historical, except when historical refer- 
ence is necessary, I pass directly into the period with which 
I was personally and professionally concerned. I may call 
attention, however, to a peculiar characteristic of the 
intervening period for its bearing on later results. This 
period was remarkable for its productivity in graduates 
of public influence and position. Each college contributed 
its quota, and usually added something to indicate its 
type. Dr. William T. Harris, whose position as United 
States Commissioner of Education gave him unusual 
opportimity for estimating the characteristics of public 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 297 

men, told me that in his judgment the Dartmouth char- 
acteristic was "directive power." This opinion led me to 
look into the record of the College in Congress, where it 
had always been represented in one or both Houses from 
the organization of the Federal Government. It seemed to 
me that the record justified Dr. Harris's opinion. And 
as I visited from time to time the alumni associations in 
various parts of the country, I became confirmed in the 
discrimination of this judgment, as I examined into the 
qualities of the early leaders in the educational, political, 
and in some cases economic interests of the States. 

Possibly there may have been some connection between 
this productivity of the nineteenth-century college in 
graduates of the general type referred to, and the relative 
place then held by the faculty in a college. The graduate 
may have been the more direct product of the teaching 
force. Certainly the teaching force as then individualized 
was the most distinguishing feature of a college, far more 
distinguishing than the physical properties of the college, 
or even its curriculum, or its administration. Several of 
the more influential college presidents were such by virtue 
of their teaching ability quite as much as by their ability 
as administrators — Woolsey of Yale, Hopkins of Wil- 
liams, Wayland of Brown, Felton of Harvard. 

But in the closing decades of the century it became 
evident that college teaching, if it was to maintain its 
effectiveness, must be supported and supplemented by 
agencies quite out of reach of the individual instructor; 
and also that it must be at once more sharply differentiated 
and more highly organized. This was the meaning of the 
modernizing process which awaited the colleges, in which 
the emphasis was to fall upon college administration. It is 



298 MY GENERATION 

not too much to say that the necessity for the modernizing 
of the colleges virtually created the science of college ad- 
ministration, which in its inner working is the science of 
coordination and adjustment, and in its outer relations the 
scientific application of economic principles to the material 
necessities of the colleges. The modern college is thus, by 
distinction from the type out of which it emerged, in much 
larger degree the product of the college administrator. 

It may be diflicult to distinguish at all points between 
the results of the normal institutional development of the 
colleges, and the results of the modernizing process. The 
normal development involved growth and advances, some- 
times very marked — advances in instruction, increase in 
endowments, growth in numbers both of faculty and 
students. The institutional development of Dartmouth 
which began under President Lord, when its physical 
shape was determined and its educational character estab- 
lished, steadily continued throughout his thirty-five years 
of administration (1828-1863), and proceeded normally 
under the administrations of his successors. Presidents 
Smith and Bartlett. The College not only took on a strong 
impress from the personality of these administrations, but 
it carried over into its future, permanent deposits of 
material resources and permanent gains in educational 
values. Like results obtained in all the New England 
colleges. Administrations varied in their relative influence, 
and yet any one familiar with the college history of New 
England in the nineteenth century can trace the institu- 
tional development of the various colleges from decade to 
decade. But the modernizing of these colleges, when it 
came, was a different matter from the normal institutional 
development which had gone before. 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 299 

The modernizing process made at least these three de- 
mands upon the colleges — first, adequate provision for 
the new subject-matter of the higher education, a demand 
which involved not only the reconstruction of the curric- 
ulum but also, in most cases, of the college plant; second, 
the reorganization of faculties based on departments rather 
than on individual chairs of instruction, a change made 
necessary, together with various modifications of college 
instruction, through the incoming of the Graduate School, 
and the reliance of the colleges upon these schools for in- 
structors and for methods of instruction; third, the ad- 
justment of the student body to these changed conditions, 
an adjustment effected chiefly through the elective system, 
involving changes in the moral as well as intellectual 
habits of students. Coincident with these new demands 
upon the colleges — a fact not to be overlooked — was a 
sudden and rapid enlargement of the constituency of the 
colleges, brought about by the rise of the high school as a 
fitting school for college. According to the statistics of the 
United States Commissioner of Education, there were 
in 1880 about eight hundred high schools in the country, 
in 1890 twenty-five hundred, and in 1900 over six thou- 
sand. Not all of these were accepted fitting schools, and 
only a proportion of students in the competent schools 
took the preparatory courses. But the number of com- 
petent schools, and of students in preparation for college 
constantly increased, with the result that the educational 
and the material problems of the colleges were perceptibly 
augmented. And to these specifications must be added the 
further fact applying to the country colleges, that the 
reconstruction and expansion of each college, so situated, 
usually required the transformation of the village in which 



300 MY GENERATION 

it was located. The material changes necessary to insure 
sanitation and economic conveniences, though apparently 
elementary, as in providing for an adequate supply of 
water, heat, and light, were often far reaching and costly. 

The modernizing process at Dartmouth was somewhat 
belated. The delay, however, was not altogether to the 
disadvantage of the College. It gave the opportunity to 
determine the nature of the expansion of which the College 
was capable. The modernizing of the colleges was not an 
external process imposed upon all alike without regard to 
the individuality of each. It was in all cases an internal 
process, subject to certain inflexible conditions, but in 
no respect a purely standardizing process. In the case of 
Dartmouth, it was determined to make use of the process 
to test the capacity of the College for expansion, having 
in mind both the vigor of its constitution and the oppor- 
tunity for stimulating and strenuous exertion. In other 
words, the policy adopted was not that of a programme. 
It was a policy of inward development, determined and 
measured by the reach of its resources, by the response 
of its constituency, and by the return of its increase and 
enlargement upon itself. Expansion was to mark the limit 
of the productivity of the College under the most stimu- 
lating treatment consistent with safety. The process of 
expansion presented itself in a series of problems — the 
financial, the physical, and the strictly educational. The 
physical involved the reconstruction of the college plant; 
the educational, the enlargement of the curriculum and 
the increase of the faculty. 

It was greatly to the advantage of the College that in 
the work now before it, it was under the control of a single 
board of management and that not too large for respon- 



II 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 



301 



sible and effective action — the Board of Trustees con- 
sisting of twelve men including the Governor of the State 
ex-officio. The Board as reconstituted through the election 
of five alumni members acquired fresh strength. The situa- 
tion called for its reorganization. A like reorganization of 
the faculty in the interest of administrative effectiveness 
was to follow. The Board of Trustees was reorganized to 
act through the five essential committees, on finance, in- 
struction, buildings and improvements, on the relation of 
the College to the alumni, and of the College to the State. 
During this period, 1893-1909, the Chairman of the 
Committee on Finance was Judge James B. Richardson, 
1893-1903, and the Honorable Benjamin A. Kimball, 
1903-1909; Frank S. Streeter, Esq., was Chairman of the 
Committee on Buildings and Improvements throughout 
the entire period; and the successive chairmen of the 
Committee on Instruction were Dr. A. H. Quint, 1893-96, 
Dr. C. F. P. Bancroft, 1897-1901, Dr. Cyrus Richardson, 
1901-06, and Professor John Robie Eastman, 1906-1909. 
While the policy of educational expansion was taking 
shape, there were joint committees with the Faculty on 
instruction and equipment (including library and labora- 
tories), and on degrees. 

It was also fortunate for the College that it was able to 
enter on its policy of expansion through a process of con- 
traction which contributed in marked degree to its unity. 
The title of the annual catalogue for 1892-93 ran — " Cat- 
alogue of Dartmouth College and Associated Institutions." 
The Associated Institutions were the Medical School 
(1798), the Chandler School of Science and the Arts (1851), 
the New Hampshire College of Agriculture and the Me- 
chanic Arts (1866), and the Thayer School of Civil Engi- 



302 MY GENERATION 

neering and Architecture (1871), During the academic 
year, 1892-93, the New Hampshire College of Agriculture 
and the Mechanic Arts was removed to Durham, and the 
incorporation of the Chandler School into the College as 
a scientific course leading to the degree of Bachelor of 
Science was effected. There remained only the Medical 
School and the Thayer School to be readjusted. 

The financial policy adopted by the Trustees was not 
made to depend upon a campaign of general solicitation 
at the beginning or at any later time. In this respect it 
differed at least in degree from the traditional and current 
policy of the colleges, in the emphasis placed upon their 
eleemosynary character. Colleges legitimately deserve this 
character. An endowed college is as justly a subject of 
public benefaction as a state university is a fit subject for 
public taxation. But while the eleemosynary theory holds 
a permanent truth, I believe that it should never be per- 
mitted to repress the ambition or to lessen the sense of 
responsibility on the part of any college to make itself 
to the largest extent possible a self-supporting institution. 
Especially is it true that an historic college is not war- 
ranted in placing itself before the public on the same foot- 
ing with a college, perhaps of like character, struggling into 
existence. The historic colleges are all possessed of an 
intangible wealth which can be made productive. They 
have at least these three sources of self-support — first, the 
earning capacity of the college; second, the free, though 
it may properly be the organized tribute of those who 
have profited by its advantages; third, the goodwill if 
not obligation, of a large constituency associated with it 
through its history or through its activities. The essen- 
tial thing in the financial development of an historic col- 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 303 

lege IS the order in which it shall draw upon its resources. 
This I believe should be in the order just named. The an- 
tecedent conditions on which an established college may 
appeal to the larger public are the assurance that its earn- 
ing capacity has been properly developed, and some clear 
evidence of the appropriate support of its graduates. The 
criticism to be passed upon most of the endowed colleges 
was that of a disproportionate reliance upon their endow- 
ments. No equivalent effort was made to increase their 
earning power. 

The policy of beginning the work of expansion at Dart- 
mouth by developing to the fullest extent the earning 
power of the College required no little courage and faith, 
but sufficient means were within reach, if not in hand, to 
justify the effort. The most substantial of these resources 
was the Tappan Wentworth fund, the bequest (1875) of 
the Honorable Tappan Wentworth, a native of New 
Hampshire, of the Governor Wentworth stock, to become 
available for the uses of the College when the amount 
bequeathed, $300,000, should reach $500,000. The prop- 
erty consisted mainly of real estate in the city of Lowell, 
where Mr. Wentworth passed his professional career. At 
the instance of Mr. C. W. Spalding of the Board of Trus- 
tees, three appraisers, citizens of Lowell, selected by the 
officers of one of the Lowell banks, were appointed to 
value the estate. It was found that the estate had reached 
the amount required for its use by the College, subject to 
[ the liquidation of two small mortgages, and to the pay- 
ment from the income of certain considerable annuities. 
The fund would become operative in two years, though 
not free from annuities for an indefinite time. Other- 
wise the fund was without conditions, and could be ap- 



304 MY GENERATION 

plied, where it was most needed, to the increase of the 
Faculty and the extension of the curriculum. 

Two other funds (for specified purposes) were of timely 
aid — one the bequest of $140,000 by Dr. Ralph Butter- 
field of Kansas City, a graduate of the class of 1839, avail- 
able for the organization of the Biological Department; 
the other the gift of $175,000, subject to minor annuities, 
by Mr. Charles T. Wilder, a generous neighbor in the 
adjacent manufacturing village of Olcott Falls (now 
Wilder), available for the extension of the Department 
of Physics. To these funds are due the first of the perma- 
nent buildings in this period of construction — the Butter- 
field Museum, and the Wilder Laboratory. 

Very timely aid at this juncture came from the State 
through a grant by the legislature of 1893-94 of $15,000, 
to be divided between the two years. This grant was 
especially significant (despite the fact that the appropri- 
ation of the next legislature was vetoed by the Governor), 
as establishing a policy of state cooperation. Subsequent 
appropriations have been: 1897-98, $10,000; 1899-1900, 
$20,000; 1901-02, $30,000; 1903-04 and subsequently 
within the period, $40,000. This recognition of itself by the 
State as a legitimate partner in developing the earning 
power of the College was consistent with the chartered re- 
lations of State and College, and with the early traditions. 
By the charter of the College, the Governor of the State is a 
member ex-officio of the Board of Trustees, and the Gover- 
nor's Councillors are Trustees on all matters relating to any 
funds given by the State, as in the care of the second Col- 
lege Grant. In making this particular grant, the State ex- 
pressed its desire to have a part in the general as well as 
local work of the College — "to render it still more useful 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 305 

in all future time in promoting literature (and elsewhere 
* science') among all mankind." But particularly the 
State, in inaugurating this special system of annual appro- 
priation, recognized its obligation to make some appro- 
priate return for the expense incurred by the College in 
the education of its sons. The preamble, introducing the 
annual appropriation, was as follows — "Whereas, in the 
education of New Hampshire students Dartmouth College 

is annually expending more than dollars above all 

amounts received for tuition, or grants from the State or 
its citizens, and whereas the policy of aiding the College in 
its educational work by annual appropriations has become 
definitely established in the State, be it enacted," etc. 

By far the most serviceable fund, however, for the 
carrying-out of the full scheme of the Trustees was the 
Fayerweather, which was set apart, consistently with the 
terms of the bequest, as a fund to meet the annual deficits 
inevitable during a period of reconstruction. The greater 
part of the large estate of Mr. Daniel B. Fayerweather, 
a philanthropic merchant of New York, had been be- 
queathed to several educational institutions. After some- 
what protracted litigation, the portion which ultimately 
fell to Dartmouth, amounted to $223,000. Upon receipt 
of the first installment of $100,000, less certain costs of 
litigation, the Trustees had voted (February 8, 1892) to 
appropriate the sum of $66,500 to extinguish the debt in- 
curred by accumulated deficits. This vote gave the sug- 
gestion of utilizing any further installments of the bequest 
as a profit and loss reconstruction fund. The whole of the 
remaining portion of the fund was so used, and in this use 
rendered an invaluable service to the College. The name 
of Mr. Fayerweather is perpetuated in the Fayerweather 



3o6 MY GENERATION 

Row of dormitories, but the effect of his bequest cannot be 
localized. No fund of many times its value, if it had been 
restricted in its uses, could have served an equal purpose 
at this juncture in the development of the College. 

A further relief of the financial situation lay in the fact 
that the initial improvements necessary to the reconstruc- 
tion of the college plant were of a kind to be at once 
and permanently remunerative. This fact allowed, under 
proper limitations, the investment of certain undesignated 
funds of the College in its own development. The ele- 
mentary improvements had to do with the physical prob- 
lems of a college in the country — water, heat, light, and 
sanitation. The first improvement was the introduction 
of an abundant supply of water into the Precinct of 
Hanover at a cost of $65,000, the College investing $25,000 
and the Precinct $20,000, the remaining $20,000 being 
bonded. At a later period the entire watershed of about 
1400 acres surrounding the reservoir was purchased at a 
cost of $34,000. The whole investment, which was a san- 
itary necessity, proved to be valuable pecuniarily. This 
improvement was followed by the inauguration of a heat- 
ing plant at a cost of $77,000, containing a battery of 8 
boilers of 125 horse-power each, operating through 7900 
feet of steam pipe, and heating 39 college buildings; to 
which was added an electric lighting plant at a cost of 
$34,000, running three dynamos of 75 K.W. each and 
equipped for power service wherever needed in the College, 
as well as for lighting. 

So far as I can learn, Dartmouth was the first college, at 
least in New England, to inaugurate and operate an in- 
dependent heating and lighting system. The innovation 
has been as successful financially, as it has been advan- 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 307 

tageous in other respects. After paying all charges, includ- 
ing interest account and depreciation, there has been a 
considerable annual surplus applied to the liquidation of 
the invested fund. In 1909, the Treasurer reported a reduc- 
tion of $24,000 on the original investment of $117,000; in 
1917, a reduction of $89,000 on an investment of $153,000. 

In providing for the departments of instruction, new 
and old, it was planned that each department or each re- 
lated group of departments should have its own building 
or buildings constructed with reference to its special needs. 
Following this plan, the Butterfield Museum was built in 
1895 for the Departments of Geology, Biology, and Soci- 
ology; Wilder Hall in 1899 for the Department of Physics; 
the Chandler Building (remodeled) in 1898 for the De- 
partments of Mathematics and Engineering; Tuck Hall 
in 1904 for the Tuck School, but providing for the time 
for the Departments of History, Economics, and Political 
Science; Dartmouth Hall, rebuilt by the alumni in 1904, 
for the Departments of Ancient and Modern Languages, 
and Philosophy; and Webster Hall, erected by the alumni 
in 1907 for the use of the College on all academic occa- 
sions. In 1909, plans had been accepted for a New Gym- 
nasium to be built from funds contributed chiefly by the 
younger alumni. The corner stone was laid by President 
Nichols at his Inauguration. 

The re-creation of a college plant in a village like Han- 
over involved the problem of housing and otherwise caring 
for students as well as of providing adequate lecture- 
rooms and laboratories. With the natural increase of 
students the resources of the village were quickly ex- 
hausted. It was necessary to devise a system of dormi- 
tories adequate to meet the rapidly growing demands of 



3o8 MY GENERATION 

the College. Since the old dormitories, Thornton, Went- 
worth. Reed, and Hallgarten, accommodating about two 
hundred students, were outgrown, new dormitories were 
created in the following order: Sanborn House (50 stu- 
dents), 1894; Crosby House (45), 1896; Richardson (50), 
1897; Fayerweather (85), 1900; Hubbard House (20), 1899; 
College Hall, including Club House and Commons (40), 
1901; Elm House (20), 1901; Wheeler (98), 1905; Hubbard 
No. 2 (48), 1906; Fayerweather North and South (100), 
1907; Massachusetts (88), 1907; New Hampshire (107), 
1908. 

The newer buildings making up the college plant were 
about equally divided between non-productive and pro- 
ductive buildings. The non-productive buildings were in 
all cases erected out of funds which came to the College by 
bequest or by gift for the uses to which they were put — 
Butterfield, Wilder, Chandler, Tuck, New Dartmouth, 
and Webster. The productive buildings, including most of 
the dormitories, were built as investments. The amount 
thus invested during the period of reconstruction was 
$901,000, including cost of improvements, like water 
supply, heat, and electricity. Had the Trustees limited 
the growth of the College to the results attending the 
solicitation of funds for productive buildings, they would 
have restricted the College to the fortune of charity, or 
have given over the dormitory system to private enter- 
prise, as in the earlier stages of development at Cornell, 
and at certain periods in the expansion of Harvard. I shall 
have occasion to refer later to the social significance of 
the exclusion of private dormitories, but I note at once 
the sanitary effect of the control of the dormitory sys- 
tem as evidenced by the very unusual health record of 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 309 

the students under the inspection of the dormitories by 
Dr. Kingsford, the Medical Director of the College. 

The local problem involved in the physical expansion 
of the College was not easy of solution. The village of 
Hanover had grown up around three sides of an open 
area known at different times as the "common," the 
"campus," and by official designation (vote of the Trus- 
tees, March 17, 1906) as the " College Green. " " The title to 
this tract came to the College by grant from the Province 
in 1771, and by prior deed from Benning Wentworth, and 
had never been alienated." This tract of about four acres 
is in the form of a rectangle, almost a square, and is bor- 
dered on all sides by rows of stately elms. It is a fine level 
green, broken only by intersecting paths. Before the days 
of organized athletics it was used as the athletic field of the 
College, and is still a college playground, though kept as 
a lawn. 

The college yard containing most of the college build- 
ings lay directly across College Street to the east. The 
yard was the lower and more level part of the college 
park, a tract of about forty acres rising toward the 
north and east into a rocky ridge, on the summit of which 
stood the observatory. The question of the further physical 
development of the College was, whether it should utilize 
the park by means of a system of terraces, or whether it 
should seek to secure the requisite space by the purchase 
of the residential parts of the village adjacent to the Com- 
mon. The matter was referred to Olmstead Brothers, the 
well-known landscape architects, who sent as their repre- " 
sentative Mr. Charles Eliot, son of President Eliot, to 
make the necessary investigation. The advice based upon 
the report of Mr. Eliot was strongly against the use of the 



310 



MY GENERATION 



college park, for two reasons — the large expense of grad- 
ing, especially in connection with any general plan of 
heating, and the aesthetic loss in converting so unique a 
possession as the college park to purely utilitarian uses, 
which might in the end prove insufficient. The college park 
had been made an object of rare beauty through the im- 
portation by Chief Justice Joel Parker, class of 1811, of 
foreign trees and shrubs which could be readily acclimated, 
and had been developed according to its natural advan- 
tages under the enthusiastic direction of President Bart- 
lett. The stone tower bearing his name, which crowns the 
summit of the ridge, replacing in most timely way the 
"Old Pine" which had been struck by lightning, is a fit 
memorial, a reminder alike of his zeal and of his taste. 

The alternative to the park plan, known as the quad- 
rangle plan, which was adopted, was by no means inex- 
pensive or otherwise free from difficulties. It called for 
the purchase of the entire residential property around the 
Common. Naturally the market value of the property 
responded quickly to the proposed change. Very properly 
too, the prospect of being dispossessed of their old-time 
homes was not welcome to many. Neither was it an alto- 
gether pleasing thought to those who were to carry out the 
process, to be the means of breaking up the quiet beauty 
of a New England village, even though offering in ex- 
change the architectural effects of college buildings. It 
was, however, some relief that a break had already been 
made by business, and that two valuable estates had 
come into possession of the College, while a third was in 
the market. A beginning could be made in harmony with 
the general plan of expansion. Two things were kept in 
view as the process went on, the maintenance of the 



$CAt.C 

Existing construction previous to I89J. 
^ Constroction between 1893 and I»09. 
Construction since 1M9. 



Map of 
Dartmouth College 

HANOVER. NEW HAMPSHIRE 




KEY TO PRINCIPAL BUILDINGS INDICATED 



( ^Fith dates of construction and additions) 



Dartmouth Hall, 1791. Rebuilt, 
1905. [structed, 1912. 

Wentworth Hall, 1828. Kecon- 

Ihornton Dormitory, 1828. Re- 
constructed, lyl2. 

North Fayerweather Dormi- 
tory, 1907. 

Fayerweather Dormitory, 1900. 

South Fayerweather Dormi- 
tory, 190G. Rebuilt, 1910. 

Reed Dormitory, 1838. 

Bartlett Hall, 18i»0. 

Culver I,;iboratorv, 1870. 

Rollins Chapel, 188.5, 1908, 1912. 

Richardson Dormitory, 1898. 

Wheeler Dormitory, 1905. 

Wilder Laboratoi-y, 1899. 

Medical Building, about 1810, 
1873, 1894. 



15. Nathan Smith Laboratory, 1908. 

16. Shattuck Ob.servatorv, 1854. 

17. Kartlett Tower, 188,5-55. 

18. JUuterfleld Museum, 1896. 

19. The " College " Church, 1796, 

1877, 1889. 

20. AVebster Auditorium, 1907. 

21. Crosby Dormitory, 1896. 

22. Hitchcock Dormitory, 1913 

23. Hubbard Dormitory, 1906. 

Moved, 1910. 

24. Chandler Mathematics Build- 

ing, 1791. Addition, 1898. 

25. Massachusetts Dormitories, 

1907, 1912. 

26. Parkhurst Administration 

Building, 1910 

27. Tuck School of Administration, 

1904. 



Sanborn Dormitory, 1895. 
Moved, 1913. 

Robinson Student Buildinff, 
1914. ^ 

College Hall, 1901. 

The Hanover Inn. Recon- 
structed, 1902. 

Thayer School of Engineering, 
1866. Reconstructed, 1911. 

Wilson Library, 1885. 

New Hampshire Dormitory, 
1908. 

Hallgarten Dormitory. 

Isolation Hospital. 

Heating Plant, 1898. Electric 
Plant. 1905. 

Store House and Shops, 1916. 

Alumni (iyinnasium, 1910. 

Alumni Athletic Field, 1893. 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 311 

proportionate amount of taxable property, and suitable 
provision for residential removals. For the latter purpose 
a new residential region lying to the north and west was 
made accessible through the opening of Webster Avenue 
and Occom Ridge. 

The accompanying map shows the location of new 
buildings during the period of reconstruction. As will 
be seen, the pressure for room still remained in spite of 
the further use of the college park, and of the compact 
arrangement of buildings on the west side. Fortunately a 
new and most valuable tract was added to the college 
property through the assured transfer of the Hiram 
Hitchcock lands, extending from the Main Street of the 
village to the river, and comprising nearly forty acres. 
The negotiation was effected by Mr. Charles P. Chase, 
the treasurer of the College, who was also a personal 
friend and adviser of Mrs. Hitchcock. Too much credit 
cannot be given to the sagacity and tact of Mr. Chase 
in securing local advantages of great value to the Col- 
lege, particularly of the Hitchcock tract, nor to the loyal 
and public action of Mrs. Hitchcock in making this gift 
of the Hitchcock estate. Although the transfer of the 
property did not actually take effect till after the death 
of Mrs. Hitchcock in the year 1912, the negotiations as 
already effected in 1908 gave the College the assurance of 
ample provision for all future plans of expansion. The 
College Green as the center of the college property was 
now flanked on the east and on the west by tracts of about 
forty acres each, each tract offering in its own way the 
finest possible opportunity for effective treatment — an 
opportunity already improved in part by the opening of 
the Tuck Drive through the Hitchcock estate. The pos- 



I 



312 MY GENERATION 

session by the College of these related properties gives an 
impressive unity to its development, leaving the valuable 
tract of pine forest to the north for public uses, under the 
joint control of the College and the Precinct of Hanover. 

The architectural development of the College was a re- 
turn to the original type. Dartmouth Hall had long been 
recognized as a choice example of the college architecture 
of the colonial period, of which the only other surviving 
examples of distinction were Nassau Hall at Princeton 
and University Hall at Brown. The more recent buildings 
at Dartmouth had brought in a variety of type according 
to the taste of the particular architect employed. It was 
determined that henceforth there should be unity of de- 
sign in construction, and that the controlling type should 
be that of the colonial college, with such modifications as 
the necessary uses of any buildings might require. To 
insure this end, the work of construction, and so far as 
practicable of reconstruction, was entrusted to a single 
architect — Mr. Charles A. Rich, of New York, at the 
time of the firm of Lamb & Rich. When the approach was 
made to Mr. Rich, the fact was not recalled that he was a 
graduate of the College, but this fact proved to be of 
great significance in the devotion and generosity of his 
labors. As the College took shape under his direction, the 
scope, the refinement, and the ingenuity of his skill be- 
came more and more apparent. It was a considerable dis- 
tance in time from the restoration of the Crosby House to 
the production of the interior of Webster Hall, but the 
shaping hand was at all points the same. 

"Improvements" and construction called for competent 
superintendence. The Trustees were fortunate in being 
able to commit this work in succession to two civil engin- 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 313 

eers, graduates of the College and of the Thayer School, 
to Mr. A. A. McKenzie, and after his death in 1904 to 
Mr. E. H. Hunter. In each case superintendence developed 
into constructive service. The heating plant and system 
was largely the result of Mr. McKenzie's industry and 
skill. The construction of the later buildings of the 
period was entrusted more and more to Mr. Hunter, to 
the marked advantage of the College in economy. A 
peculiarly skillful piece of engineering was the moving 
back forty feet of the stone apse of Rollins Chapel for 
the insertion, according to the unique design of Professor 
Keyes, of a choir with little chapels on either side — a de- 
sign which added much to the interior perspective, and 
nearly doubled the capacity of the chapel. Further de- 
mands for superintendence arose in connection with the 
management of the Commons, after the erection of College 
Hall, arwd also of the Inn after the Trustees decided to 
take direct charge of it rather than to lease it. Mr. 
Henry N. Teague, just graduated from the first class in 
the Tuck School, was made Controller of the College 
Club, including the Commons, and Mr. Arthur P. Fair- 
field, a graduate of the class of 1900, who had had suc- 
cessful experience in hotel service, was made business 
manager of the Inn. During the period of physical ex- 
pansion the officers of administration were in the Lord 
House, at the head of the College Green, the former 
residence of President Lord. Parkhurst Hall, the present 
commodious administration building, the gift of Lewis 
Parkhurst of the class of 1878, was first occupied in 
1911. 

The educational expansion of the College necessarily 
adjusted itself to existing conditions. It meant in part the 



314 MY GENERATION 

introduction of entirely new subjects like biology and 
sociology into the curriculum, in part the organization of 
unorganized or attached subjects like history and eco- 
nomics into departments, in part the disproportionate 
increase of the teaching force in some departments as 
especially in the modern languages, and generally an 
enlargement of the Faculty. More money naturally was 
expended for equipment in the direction of the sciences 
than in any other; but as a further and very definite part 
of the expansion effected came in through the relative 
place assigned to the new humanities, history, economics, 
sociology, and the newer forms of political science, the 
increase of expenditure here, both in equipment and 
teaching force, was relatively great. Taking the three 
sections into which the curriculum of the College was 
divided, — the Departments of Language and Literature; 
Mathematics and the Physical and Natural Sciences; 
History, the Social and Political Sciences, and Philosophy, 
— little difference appears in the expense of the first two 
groups ; the first group costing somewhat more for salaries, 
the second for equipment. The third group represents 
about three fourths of the expense of either of the others. 
The extension of the subject-matter of the curriculum 
enlarged the intellectual horizon of the College; so also 
did the introduction in considerable numbers of new men 
into the Faculty, many of whom were from other colleges. 
Of the one hundred and twenty appointments made to the 
academic Faculty during the sixteen years of my admin- 
istration (the enumeration does not include the faculties 
in the Associated Schools), forty-eight were of graduates 
of the College, seventy-two were of graduates of other 
colleges. Classifying these appointments by grades: 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 315 

To professorships, Dartmouth graduates 4 

graduates of other colleges 12 16 

To assistant professorships, Dartmouth graduates 19 

graduates of other colleges 25 44 

To instructorships, Dartmouth graduates 25 

graduates of other colleges 35 60 120 



The composition of the Academic Faculty at the close of 
my administration was: 

Professors, Dartmouth graduates 14 

graduates of other coUeeges 12 26 

Assistant Professors, Dartmouth graduates 14 

graduates of other colleges 14 28 

Instructors, Dartmouth graduates 9 

graduates of other colleges 10 19 73 

Thirty colleges and universities were represented by the 
bachelor's degree and twenty-four by advanced degrees. 
Twelve additional teachers in the Associated Schools 
gave instruction in the College. 

Nowhere was the modernizing process more evident 
than in the changes it wrought in professional habits. No 
term, for example, would have been more unfamiliar, or 
in most cases unacceptable to the members of an old-time 
faculty than the term "office" as a substitute for the al- 
together congenial term "study." But the new buildings 
brought in offices adjacent to the classrooms, and the 
Faculty began to announce office hours. All the common 
activities associated with instruction centered in the of- 
fice — that of the Dean, which soon added to itself the 
offices of registration. The advance in demands of this 
form of administrative service was rapid. When Professor 
Emerson was asked in 1893 to serve as Dean, it was with 



I 



31 6 MY GENERATION 

the understanding that he should retain his place as head 
of the Department of Physics. Within five years he found 
the combination impracticable and gave over, though re- 
luctantly, his teaching, and shortly after Mr. Tibbetts, 
who had been his assistant, was made Registrar with his 
own assistants. Acting in harmony with this general tend- 
ency the Faculty proceeded to do its business more and 
more by delegating its powers to committees. Without 
doubt committee service is the bane of a professor's life; 
but most professors found themselves in this dilemma — 
either to do the drudgery often imposed by the new task, 
or to be left out of the account in making up the new po- 
sitions of faculty influence and authority. The advantage 
of committee service became more evidently desirable 
when the appointment of committees, even of the nom- 
inating committee, was given over by the President en- 
tirely into the hands of the Faculty. 

The changes here noted could not have been effected 
without the ready and even hearty cooperation of the 
Faculty. Nothing, for example, could have been more de- 
lightfully helpful than the hospitality of the older mem- 
bers not only toward the incoming members, but also 
toward the new subjects introduced into the curriculum, 
and toward the new methods of instruction and adminis- 
tration. The utter absence of friction in the transition from 
the old to the new, or from simple to more complicated 
ways, was due entirely to the spirit of the Faculty, which 
was not that of acquiescence but of enthusiastic support. 
The hospitality of the older members was matched by the 
tactful adjustment of the incoming members to existing 
conditions, most of whom were strangers to Dartmouth. 
I recall those called to the headship of departments during 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 317 

the first year — C. D. Adams in Greek; D. C. Wells in 
Sociology; William Patten in Biology; H. D. Foster in 
History; F. B. Emery to a new professorship in English — 
and next after, F. H. Dixon in Economics; E. F. Nichols 
in Physics; and L. H. Dow in French. The death of Pro- 
fessor Pollens, a man of rare linguistic and literary attain- 
ments, left the chair of French in a most necessitous con- 
dition at a time when large demands were being made 
upon it from the new position of the Modern Languages 
in the curriculum. It was quite impossible to repeat Pro- 
fessor Pollens's type — himself a native Swiss, educated 
in this country; and the graduate schools had not begun 
to do satisfactory work in the modern languages. In this 
dilemma Mr. Louis H. Dow, a classical scholar who had 
served for a year as a substitute in the Department of 
Greek, was asked to make his classical equipment a foun- 
dation for specialized training in French. The offer was 
accepted, with the understanding that he should have the 
right of way in reorganizing the French Department, a de- 
partment which in 1908-09 was made up of one professor, 
three assistant professors, and five instructors. I cite this 
instance as an illustration of methods which happily came 
to the relief of the College at a time when there was a 
scarcity of men already prepared by special graduate 
training for the headship of new departments, or of de- 
partments under the pressure of enforced expansion. It 
was very fortunate that in this particular emergency the 
Modern Languages could be underwritten by the Classics. 
While taking note of the changes attending the enlarge- 
ment and reconstruction of the Faculty, it is of interest 
to note the change which took place in the student body, 
especially in the distribution of students according to 



3i8 MY GENERATION 

locality. It will be seen how definitely the process of na- 
tionalizing the College had begun to take effect within the 
period of reconstruction. In the Catalogue of 1893-94 
the registration stood by localities — New England, 427; 
Middle States, 34; Near West, 21; Beyond the Mississippi, 
11. In the Catalogue of 1908-09 the registration stood — 
New England, 839 (Massachusetts, 502, New Hampshire, 
197, other New England States, 140); Middle States, 149; 
Near West, 98; Beyond the Mississippi, 48. 

An amusing illustration of the tendency to generalize 
according to preconceived notions rather than according 
to ascertained facts, appeared in the comment of a New 
York daily on the success in the same year of the Dart- 
mouth football team over those of Harvard and Princeton. 
The success was attributed to the physique of the men 
from the farms and lumber regions of northern New Eng- 
land. As a matter of fact the team for that year was made ■■' 
up chiefly of fellows from Western cities. 

Foreseeing the exactions of the presidency on the ad- 
ministrative side, I had renounced in advance all hope of 
teaching. In this respect my course was in almost painful 
contrast, as I often felt, with that of one of my younger 
contemporaries — President Hyde, of Bowdoin — who 
was able in the midst of executive duties to make his chair 
of instruction a seat of power. As for myself, instead of 
assuming the teaching function I did not hesitate to avail 
myself of the most valuable aids in my administrative 
duties. Professor John K. Lord was made Acting President 
of the Faculty in the absence of the President. This ap- 
pointment meant much more to me than the freedom of 
often prolonged absences among the alumni. It meant the 
privilege of constant and most helpful advice. Later, and 




EDWARD TUCK 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 319 

especially during the period of my illness while still in 
office, the promotion of Mr. Ernest M. Hopkins, who had 
been my private secretary, to be Secretary of the College, 
enabled me to relieve myself of certain definite responsi- 
bilities. The evidence of administrative qualities of the 
highest order gave the assurance of entire competency to 
meet the changed conditions. 

About midway in the process of reconstruction, the Col- 
lege began to receive the aid of the benefactions of Edward 
Tuck of the class of 1862, then residing in Paris. I refer 
distinctly and separately to the cooperation of Mr. Tuck 
because of its timely significance. It was the most im- 
portant individual factor in the reconstruction and ex- 
pansion of the College. The amount of his benefactions, 
and equally their object gave security to the advances al- 
ready made, and enabled the College in due time to take 
the initiative in a new field of academic training. They 
also gave direct moral support to the policy of the admin- 
istration. Mr. Tuck was the first of the alumni of means 
to identify himself financially with what had begun to be 
known as the "New Dartmouth"; and his aid preceded 
any organized or collective financial support on the part of 
the alumni. It was the more gratifying and assuring that 
it was altogether unsolicited, indeed unlooked for. Mr. 
Tuck had spent most of his time abroad since his gradu- 
ation. Appointed to the consular service in Paris the year 
after he left college, he passed directly from that service 
into the banking house of Munroe and Company; and 
although he was, during the greater part of his connection 
with the house, the head of the New York branch, he 
was at the time almost equally a resident of New York 
and Paris. After his retirement from the banking business 



320 MY GENERATION 

in 1881, Paris became his permanent residence. His inter- 
est in the College was not developed by contact with its 
activities or by reminders of its needs. 

The first intimation I had of Mr. Tuck's intentions 
came in a personal letter under date of October 21, 1898, 
in which he wrote that he had just seen in a New York 
paper that the Trustees were urging me to take "a leave 
of absence for rest and recuperation," and in which he 
urged me personally to put the leave of absence into a 
European trip, including a visit of Mrs. Tucker and myself 
in Paris. The letter enclosed a generous check to aid in 
carrying this plan into effect. It also conveyed the assur- 
ance of his very great interest in the recent work for the 
College, and intimated his own wish "to do something for 
Old Dartmouth." The letter of my old college friend was 
a happy reminder of our college days, especially as he 
wrote "of the winter term of 1860-61 when we roomed 
together" in the house now occupied by Professor George 
D. Lord; and the kind and urgent invitation fitted into the 
plan we had formed for a trip through the Near East. 
Upon our return from this trip we spent a week in Paris 
as the guests of the Tucks. I found the well-matured in- 
tention in Mr. Tuck's mind to establish an endowment 
fund in the College for the exclusive use of instruction. 
The fund was to bear the name of his father, the Honor- 
able Amos Tuck, who graduated from the College in the 
class of 1835, and was a Trustee from 1857 to 1866. The 
securities for the fund were already set aside, to be turned 
over to the College by his New York agent upon the 
acknowledgment of the acceptance of the fund by the 
Trustees. (The securities were put by Mr. Tuck at a 
minimum value of $300,000, but as he foresaw, their cu- 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 321 

mulative value soon rose to $500,000, at which amount 
they stand on the Treasurer's books.) There was no sug- 
gestion or impHcation of further gifts, but within a year 
the establishment of the Amos Tuck School of Admin- 
istration and Finance, of which I shall have more to say in 
its place, brought additional funds for building and library. 
And it is proper to state here that at the beginning of the 
administration of President Nichols, the original amount 
of the endowment fund ($500,000) was duplicated, fol- 
lowed by successive gifts of various intent, and that dur- 
ing the opening years of the administration of President 
Hopkins, though these have been coincident with the dis- 
turbed and disturbing conditions of the War, Mr. Tuck 
has not lost sight of the College in the midst of his patriotic 
devotion to the common cause of France and America in 
the War.i 

The financial cooperation of the alumni as a collective 
body passed through three stages. Strictly speaking it 
anticipated the organized reconstruction of the College. 
It formed a part of the movement of the alumni for repre- 
sentation ; the promise of it was in fact made an argument 
for granting their request. It had to do in this initial stage 
with the advancement of athletics as a part of a larger plan 
for the physical development of the College. The imme- 
diate result did not reach beyond the preparation of the 
athletic field known as the Alumni Oval, but the ultimate 
result was the construction of the new gymnasium. The 
second stage was the response to the appeal for the re- 
placement of Dartmouth Hall when destroyed by fire, 
made by a committee of which Melvin O. Adams of the 

^ At the Commencement dinner of 1919, President Hopkins, in announcing 
recent gifts of Mr. Tuck, said that the total of his gifts to the College in the 
past twenty years amounted to over a million and a half dollars. 



322 MY GENERATION 

class of 1871 was chairman, a response which carried with 
it to a successful issue the hesitating movement for the 
building of Webster Hall. Although the corner stone of 
Webster Hall was laid at the Webster Centennial, 1901, 
the building was not completed till after the rebuilding of 
Dartmouth Hall in 1905. The third stage has been that of 
organized effort for continuous and permanent results. This 
effort has already resulted in the financial cooperation 
of classes, and in the beginnings of a general fund to be 
made up by annual contribution of the alumni at large, 
a part of each annual contribution to go on deposit, and a 
part to be put at the disposal of the Trustees for current 
uses. The fund was devised by Mr. H. H. Hilton, of the 
Board of Trustees, in 1907, after the general scheme of the 
Yale Alumni Fund, and does me the honor of bearing my 
name. The more complete organization of the alumni has 
added greatly to their usefulness to the College. The 
Association of Class Secretaries, founded by Secretary 
Hopkins in 1905, has become a very influential body; and 
still more perhaps the Alumni Council, due to the same 
organizing source, now recognized as a most valuable 
although unchartered auxiliary to the Board of Trustees. 
The period of reconstruction, as defined by the Trustees, 
financially covered twelve of the sixteen years of my ad- 
ministration — 1893-1905. During this period the draft 
upon the fund which had been set apart to meet the 
succession of annual deficits amounted to $169,476.89. 
For the remaining four years there was an annual surplus 
appropriated in part to the recovery of minor funds, and 
in part to current improvements, as in the remodeling of 
the interior of Culver Hall, and in the first enlargement of 
Rollins Chapel. IMeanwhile the earning power of the Col- 




WEBSTER HALL 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 323 

lege, estimated in the return from tuition, had increased 
from less than $20,000 net in 1892 to over $120,000 net in 
the years 1905-09. 

I said at the outset of this section that it was one object 
of the general policy of reconstruction and expansion to 
test the normal capacity of the College. At the close of 
my administration it was found that the normal capacity 
of the College, measured by the increase of faculty and 
students, by the enlargement of its facilities for instruc- 
tion, and by the extension of its endowments, had in- 
creased threefold.^ That this was no abnormal increase 
was proven by the fact that under the more intensive 
administration of my successor, President Nichols, the nor- 
mal capacity, measured by the same standards, showed a 
fourfold increase. With this fourfold increase of capacity 
the College, under the strong and timely leadership of 
President Hopkins, was able to put itself at the service 
of the Nation. 

IV 

The New Morale 

The external changes brought about by the modernizing 
process were soon apparent, but their effect upon the in- 
ternal life of the College could not be quickly seen or 
easily estimated. The effect, for example, upon scholar- 
ship was for some time in doubt. On the whole the imme- 
diate efiPect was not favorable. The inherited scholarship 
of the classroom was the resultant of well-formulated sub- 

* For a general statement regarding the endowments and resources of Dart- 
mouth, see series of articles in Dartmouth Bi-Monthly for 1907-08 discussing 
the resources and expenditures of the College, collected into a pamphlet. For a 
later exhibit of the properties of the College see Manual of Charter and Docu- 
ments, by Judge William M. Chase, Clerk of the Board of Trustees, 1911. 



324 MY GENERATION 

jects, of a logical routine, and of a compulsory discipline. 
All these conditions were changed to the degree in which 
the new regime took effect. There was a manifest imma- 
turity about the new subject-matter as seen from the 
point of view of the classroom. Students entering college 
by way of the new subjects were relatively ill-prepared. 
Instructors in the sciences very much preferred for their 
classes those who had entered for the A.B. degree. The 
new courses appeared fragmentary when compared with 
the routine long at work in the classics and mathematics. 
And the elective system called for a sudden shift of will 
power from the college authorities to the individual stu- 
dent. There was, of course, much stimulus to scholarship 
latent in the new subject-matter and in the principle of 
the elective system, but the interruption of the college 
discipline was felt earlier than the stimulation of the 
new freedom. 

If any one had assumed that the modernizing process 
was to be altogether an intellectual process, he would soon 
have been convinced that it required for its success strong 
moral supports from without, and the utilization of the 
moral forces within the student body. The uncertain but 
really decisive factor in the whole matter was the student 
himself, involving his moral quite as much as his intellec- 
tual attitude. What would his response be, or, if one may 
still be justified in recalling the overworked and outworn 
term of the new psychology, what would be the nature 
of his "reaction" under the process.'* The dominant char- 
acteristic of the New England, certainly of the Dart- 
mouth student of a generation ago was his independence. 
Sometimes this independence showed itself in a certain 
aloofness from more serious college affairs, and on occa- 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 325 

sions in positive antagonisms. But it was the most valuable 
quality which he possessed, estimated even by its educa- 
tional use, and was to be preserved at the cost, if neces- 
sary, of the liabilities to which I have referred. But why 
should these liabilities be accepted as necessary.'* Why 
should not this prime quality of independence be trans- 
formed into a larger self-respect, and informed with the 
spirit of responsibility.'* From the first I believed in the 
incorporation of the students, individually and collec- 
tively, into the movement for reconstruction and expan- 
sion. I believed that it was entirely possible, as it was 
certainly in every way desirable, that they should be made 
to share in the "corporate consciousness of the College." 
To the degree in which they understood and felt this 
larger consciousness, they would be qualified to take a 
leading part in remoulding college sentiment as a means 
of reaching and applying higher standards. With this end 
in view, I sought to interpret the history and traditions of 
the College in their relation to present plans.The graduates 
up to 1898 will recall a weekly exercise known as "Rhetor- 
icals" held in the Old Chapel, attended by the whole 
College — a somewhat unruly exercise open to various 
liabilities, but affording a rare opportunity of indoctrin- 
ating undergraduates into the permanent duties and re- 
sponsibilities of the college fellowship. When this exercise 
was abolished through excess of numbers, "Dartmouth 
Night" was instituted, to bring the undergraduate body 
into sympathetic and intelligent contact with the alumni, 
the living and the dead. The portraits of the more illus- 
trious of the early graduates, hung for the occasion on the 
walls of the Old Chapel, and later permanently vivifying 
the walls of Webster, gave a reality to the men and events 



326 MY GENERATION 

of the past, comparable to the effect of the presence and 
the voice of the living graduate of like distinction. Through 
the suggestion of President Nichols in the observance of 
the custom in his administration, "Dartmouth Night" was 
made the occasion for gatherings of all the graduates in all 
the Associations throughout the country and abroad. The 
" Night " was marked by the exchange of greetings between 
these widespread and remote gatherings and the gather- 
ing at the College. 

The response of the students was prompt and hearty 
in all ways of external aid, especially in the effort to na- 
tionalize the constituency of the College. It was the stu- 
dents who carried the College into the Western cities and 
over the Mississippi. This cooperation required, however, 
only an intelligent enthusiasm. A much deeper test was 
to come in the education and control of college sentiment. 
Here there was need of reform, especially in the matter 
of the survival of certain college customs which had be- 
come demoralizing and obstructive. The test at this point 
soon came, as was to have been expected, in the natural 
course of college life. The result was so significant as to 
warrant a somewhat detailed reference. There was an old 
custom, reaching in fact back of the memory of most living 
graduates, known as the "horning" of instructors, who 
had for any reason wakened the wrath of the student. It 
was the accredited method of disciplining the Faculty. I 
do not know whether it obtained in other colleges or was 
altogether a local habit. But whether supported or not by 
general college usage, the time had come for its abolition 
at Dartmouth. When the custom first came under my 
official notice, I did not treat it in the way of discipline, but 
as a fit subject for the exercise of college sentiment. I fully 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 



327 



explained its relation to the general college life, showing 
how vitally it concerned the spirit of the whole college 
fellowship, and making clear its absolute inconsistency 
with the social progress of the College. I had no way of 
measuring the impression produced by this view of the 
matter, except by the length of time which elapsed before 
the recurrence of a "horning." It so happened that at the 
time of its recurrence, I was absent from the College on 
a trip among the alumni. I had just left Washington for 
Chicago, when I received word of the outbreak of the cus- 
tom in somewhat aggravated form. I canceled further 
engagements, and, returning instantly and unexpectedly 
to Hanover, began at once a quiet but thorough course of 
investigation. It had been a class affair, and every man in 
the class was asked directly about his part in it. No one 
was asked what any other man did. As a result of the in- 
vestigation, the self -convicted leaders in the affair were 
separated from College for longer or shorter periods. The 
penalty of "separation" was chosen to express the single 
idea that any student who, under the existing conditions, 
and in face of the appeal which had been made to college 
sentiment, chose to uphold in his own person the insulting 
custom at issue, did not really belong to the college fellow- 
ship, so long as he upheld the view which allowed him to 
indulge in the practice. The action, though considered 
somewhat drastic — far less so by the students than by 
many of the alumni — was not considered by the students 
unjust or uncalled for. There was, however, a certain feel- 
ing among them that the penalty was unequal in its 
application, a feeling justified by their more intimate 
knowledge of the relative part taken by different actors. 
In view of this knowledge, they asked of the Faculty, 



I 



328 MY GENERATION 



1 

'nedf ! 



through a committee, that the investigation be reopened 
in the hope of a reduction of some of the penalties. To this 
request the reply was made that further consideration 
would be given, provided meanwhile the College would 
consider, and discuss, and declare itself in reference to 
the continuance of the custom, accompanying this action 
by careful study of methods of satisfying grievances and 
complaints. This proposition was accepted in serious spirit, 
and for over a week the subject was fully discussed in fra- 
ternities, classes, and finally in a series of mass meetings 
of the College. As a result, resolutions were unanimously 
adopted committing the College to the abandonment of 
the custom, and providing a proper substitute for it. When 
this position had been fairly taken, the request for a change 
of penalty was met, not by the reduction of it, but by the 
removal of it; and each student who had been separated 
was permitted to resume his place in his class, upon con- 
forming to the now organized college sentiment. College 
sentiment had come in to take the place of college author- 
ity. For the college authority to have perpetuated itself 
under the conditions would have been irritating and un- 
generous. The end of discipline was not the separation of 
offending students, but the casting-out of an offensive 
custom, and the exorcising of the spirit which informed it. 
The action of the student body at this time constituted 
one of the most honorable and decisive episodes in the 
history of the College. Its effect was permanent and cumu- 
lative. I remember saying to Dean Emerson some years 
afterwards, when some incident brought back the episode, 
that if there was any justification of the term, the "New 
Dartmouth," it came from this advance in the tone of 
college sentiment, rather than from any progress in the 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 329 

external development of the College. One outcome of this 
action was the organization of a society, the aim of which 
as announced was "to bring into close touch and harmony 
the various branches of college activities, to preserve the 
customs and traditions of Dartmouth, to promote her 
welfare and to protect her name." The society took the 
name of Palseopitus — the rendering in Greek of the Old 
Pine, around which gathered the earliest traditions of the 
College. At first the society was secret and self-perpet- 
uating, then the secrecy was thrown off, and later it was 
given over to the upper classes for the determination of 
its membership. Though entirely unofficial in its action, it 
merits the statement of the "Alumni Magazine" that on 
the whole it represents "the conscience of the College at 
work." 

In dealing with an academic democracy, whether per- 
sonally or officially, one has constantly to keep in mind 
the fact that the democratic spirit is less hostile to the 
idea of discipline than to the idea of conformity. De- 
mocracy does not easily adjust itself anywhere to the 
social conventions, doubtless because of their inherited 
association with rank or caste. And yet democracy is not 
Bohemianism. It is in no sense the cult of the uncon- 
ventional. It lacks altogether the charm of the unconven- 
tional, when the unconventional takes on an unaffected 
alliance with nature or with art. Democracy, however, has 
its own conventions, among which is the obsession in some 
minds that if it is to retain its character it must abide 
within strictly primitive conditions. 

It was inevitable that the modernizing process, as ap- 
plied to the physical reconstruction of the colleges would 
bring them into more direct contact with the ordinary 



330 MY GENERATION 

social conventions. The same forces which were at work 
creating new conveniences, comforts, and even luxuries 
compared with former necessities, in private and public 
places and among all classes of people, were at work in 
the colleges. The modern dormitory was simply the mod- 
ern home adapted to academic uses — furnished ade- 
quately with water, heat, and light, and kept in sanitary 
condition by proper service. The chief innovation in both 
cases was the invasion of the old order by the bath. The 
daily bath, or at least the opportunity for it, caused a 
general leveling-up of society. It removed some arbitrary 
but very separating distinctions. The bath in time created 
its own routine to which it exacted a certain loyalty. Pro- 
fessor Arthur Sherburne Hardy used to quote an old 
countryman in these parts, whose late experience of the 
bath had resulted in more loyalty to the idea than familiar- 
ity with the practice, as saying, "I will have my bath once 
a year whether I need it or not." The bath came to mean 
much more than cleanliness, not so much more as to the 
Romans, but still much and in various ways. A college was 
not the same before and after the institution of the "Order 
of the Bath." I am free to confess, however, that there 
were at Dartmouth occasional lapses from the new order, 
and not a few inconsistencies and antagonisms. I recall, 
for example, the invasion of the sweater at the time of its 
most flagrant ugliness — an ugliness so flagrant that I 
was obliged to make a ruling to protect the decency of the 
chapel service, that it be excluded or covered. 

To some minds the modern dormitory was the unmis- 
takable sign of the incoming of luxury. So it appeared to 
some of our older graduates, jealous for the old-time 
guarantees of the democracy of the College. I recall two 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 331 

of these especially, both men of ample means and one 
certainly of the amplest culture — Dr. John Ordronaux. 
Dr. Ordronaux was a most delightful visitor at Hanover, 
when he came annually on his tour among the medical 
schools as Lecturer on Medical Jurisprudence. I think that 
each new dormitory with its sanitary equipment was an 
offense to him, and evoked the most strenuous denuncia- 
tion that his unequaled command of Latin derivatives 
could supply. I never failed to avail myself of the intel- 
lectual treat which followed when once he caught sight 
of the modern Sybarites who dwelt in the modern dormi- 
tory. Very generously, but not quite consistently, Dr. 
Ordronaux left a "Good Samitarian fund" to the value of 
$30,000 for the benefit of professors longest in service, who 
had experienced the early privations of college life. The 
other graduate to whom I have referred, after visiting 
Hanover by invitation of one of the Trustees with a view 
to a bequest, flatly refused the suggestion of his friend. 
The bequest, which was made known soon after, was most 
worthily, but as it evidently seemed to him much more 
fitly, bestowed upon a woman's college, which at the time 
was passing through an almost identical modernizing 
process in its building programme with that at Dartmouth. 
In course of time it came to be seen by all that, beyond 
insuring safety and sanitation, the dormitory system had 
a direct effect upon the morale of student life. It equalized 
social conditions. As administered at Dartmouth, every 
dormitory provided rooms for poorer students with access 
to the same general conveniences.^ There were no dormi- 

^ The last two dormitories built during my administration, Massachusetts 
(1907), and New Hampshire (1908), represented the possibilities of the modern 
dormitory for equalizing conditions, allowing all occupants to share alike in the 
conveniences common to the higher grade of dormitories. Each dormitory cost 



332 MY GENERATION 

tories set apart for students on scholarships. Dormitory 
life became a training in academic democracy, in the pro- 
cess which I have described as leveHng-up. College Hall — 
a college club including commons — was built as a com- 
plement to the dormitory system, to carry out the same 
democratic principle and to insure its acceptance. The 
fraternity idea was not discouraged, but by the ruling of 
the Trustees no fraternity house was allowed to accommo- 
date more than fourteen members — about one third of 
the usual membership; and, though there was no rule 
against separate tables at the fraternities, the spirit in- 
volved in the ruling on rooms has been carried over by 
the fraternities for the protection of the common college 
democracy. 

The adjustment of college life to intercollegiate ath- 
letics, having in view the effect upon the college morale, 
was a difficult and at some points a most vexatious prob- 
lem. "Nevertheless," as Mr. Beecher used to say when 
confronted by the results not altogether to his liking from 
policies which he advocated, I accepted athletics as a 
legitimate factor in our educational life. To my mind, the 
Greek settled that question decisively and passed on the 
principle to us through our English antecedents. I have 
never been able to see the moral equivalent of organized 
athletics. The alternative is recreation; but recreation is 
no substitute for athletics, because athletics is in no sense 
a recreation. Athletics is a game, a contest, and means all 
that is implied in these terms — adequate training, stim- 

about $80,000, and each accommodated about 100 students — Massachusetts 
88, New Hampshire 107. The average rental per man in each of these dormitories 
was $100, but the rental was so distributed in gradations of $5, from $65 to 
$135, that one hundred and eighteen occupants of the two dormitories paid less 
than $100 each, six paid $100 each, and seventy-one paid over $100 each. 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 333 

ulating antagonism, and a considerable degree of publicity. 
But these in turn imply a coaching system — presumably 
a professional though academic coach, college rivalries, 
and the exploitation of the press. These are all serious 
liabilities. They cannot be ignored, or overlooked, or min- 
imized. "Nevertheless," to return to my quotation, I held 
fast to my educational belief in athletics during a some- 
what stormy period of discussion, substantially for the 
moral possibilities rather than the physical results to be 
gained. I have always been doubtful of the value of the 
physical results, especially to the most highly trained 
athletes. 

My reasons in support of athletics, stated more definitely, 
were, first, I regarded athletics as a legitimate school for 
training in leadership. "Leadership," as I have elsewhere 
said, "grows out of the combination of personality and 
attainment. The proportion of personality to attainment 
varies greatly, but neither one is sufficient of itself to 
make a leader. The loafer cannot become a leader, how- 
ever agreeable he may be personally. The athlete cannot 
become a college leader if he is not essentially a gentleman, 
with some recognizable intellectual force. When the scholar 
fails to reach leadership, as is so often the case, having 
presumably attainment, the lack is somewhere in those 
personal qualities which make up efi^ective personality — 
authority, virility, sincerity, sympathy, manners." 

Without doubt the personality of many athletes enters 
to a considerable degree into their influence over their 
fellows, but their chief claim to leadership lies in the field 
of attainment. This fact must not be overlooked in estimat- 
ing the value of academic athletics. If the athlete seems 
to compete with the scholar, it is because he represents 



334 



MY GENERATION 



much of the discipHne which scholarship requires. He is 
of no account till he reaches a given standard of excellence. 
Further, it must be remembered to the credit of athletes 
that it has introduced the idea of excellence into what is 
known as college life. It has literally projected this idea 
into an otherwise loose, flabby, unmotived life of the 
undergraduate. It compels a different standard in all col- 
lege activities, even those of a more intellectual cast — 
dramatic, journalistic, artistic. The amateur undergrad- 
uate has been obliged to conform to a different standard 
of college opinion, if he wishes recognition outside the re- 
wards of scholarship. 

A second reason for my respect for athletics was the 
beneficial character of its democracy, — no more marked, 
of course, than that of the classroom, but on an equality 
with it. The one and only inexorable test in either case is 
attainment, excellence. It puts the man relying solely on 
personal effort on the level with the man who has some 
inherited advantage. It gives a man who is not of the 
highest scholarly aptitude the self-respect and courage of 
being able to do something well, something of recogniz- 
able value. I think that the loss of this privilege would on 
the whole lower the tone of college life. 

And a third reason, a reason which at least held my 
serious attention to athletics, was the constant succession 
of moral issues involved in the management of intercol- 
legiate athletics. Athletics occupied the territory nearest 
the frontier line between the colleges and the outer world. 
It was as easy to cross this line from without as from 
within. The task of an athletic committee was unique 
among college committees, requiring always intense 
watchfulness and at times stubborn resistance. The in- 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 335 

vasion of commercialism was dangerous because of its 
sophistries. It had its propaganda well prepared to meet 
college conditions. Perhaps the most conspicuous was the 
argument for the employment of college baseball teams 
at summer resorts, namely that it was proper to capitalize 
one's college athletic reputation; not to do this was a 
manifest waste and needless deprivation for poorer stu- 
dents to endure. Here lay the special peril of college ath- 
letics, through the relation of one branch to a public game 
which had a well-defined market value. To such an extent 
had this peril become a reality in the academic world that 
I felt constrained to devote a paragraph to the subject in 
one of my opening addresses on the assembling of the 
College. "Apparently," I then said, "the temptations to 
evasion or deception, or to open surrender to commercial- 
ism in conViection with baseball are too strong to be re- 
sisted. The academic player has not been able to maintain 
his separateness, his distinctness from the professional 
player. More demoralization, in my judgment, has come 
into college life from the commercial seductions of base- 
ball than from all the liabilities of any sort inherent in or 
associated with football, the one really great and dis- 
tinctive academic game. If this demoralization continues, 
I am prepared, as a lover and defender of college athletics, 
to advise the elimination of baseball as an intercollegiate 
game from college sports. I would confine academic sports 
to those games which have no such well-defined market 
value, unless we can make the price we pay, and which 
we do pay most liberally, a sufficient reward — namely 
college honor." 

It gave me much gratification to be able to say the 
following year, as a result of the action of the Athletic 



336 MY GENERATION 

Committee, entirely on its own motion, by which the 
college baseball team that had played under an engage- 
ment during the summer season, had been debarred from 
a place in intercollegiate contests, with the acquiescence 
not only of the College but of the team itself, "I wish to 
congratulate the College upon the way in which during 
the past year it has, in a collective sense, played the gentle- 
man. In your action in regard to summer baseball you 
took what you regarded as the position of honor at the 
risk of defeat. The fact that your action brought you suc- 
cess does not detract from the honor due you; and in this 
honor none are more deserving of recognition than those 
who generously acted with you to their own disadvantage. 
This college has not seen a finer example of undergraduate 
loyalty than was shown by the men who gave their effec- 
tive support to the team from which they had been de- 
barred." The incident here referred to serves to illustrate 
a certain moral discipline which may inhere in the manage- 
ment of intercollegiate athletics. It is not to be overlooked 
in any just estimate of the athletic situation at a period 
when it was, with reason, most suspected of commercial- 
ism. As the situation developed it cleared itself more and 
more of questionable practices. When alumni, five years 
apart in graduation, discussed the athletic situation, the 
moral argument was almost invariably with the younger 
alumni. Looking back upon this general period, I think 
that the undergraduates who passed under the strain and 
discipline of intercollegiate athletics, came out with a 
better preparation for meeting the conditions of the outer 
world than those who, for fear of intercollegiate liabilities, 
were restricted to intramural athletics. 

I have said that the elective system was the new and 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 



337 



important factor introduced by the modernizing process 
into the general college discipline, the result of which 
might be expected to appear in the effect upon the college 
morale. I have also said that the immediate effect was not 
favorable to scholarship, but rather disturbing, partly 
because of the immaturity of the subjects which came in 
with it, and partly because of the unpreparedness of most 
students for the larger freedom which it prescribed. It 
presented itself to them with the apparent inconsistency 
of a compulsory freedom. In due time, however, a radical 
change took place both in the apprehension of the new 
subject-matter and in the use of the new freedom. As the 
new subjects came under academic appraisal, they were 
seen to have a distinctive value or values which added to 
the sum total of the college discipline. If the college dis- 
cipline was to be understood as set to the task of develop- 
ing the art of thinking, here were subjects which called for 
perhaps the finest exercise of the art — the art of inter- 
pretation: history, for the interpretation of events, soci- 
ology for the interpretation of human society, and eco- 
nomics for the interpretation of those values which are the 
product of human invention and labor. History naturally 
led the way in training for this art. This was its high func- 
tion, not the commitment of information, however well 
ordered or however necessary for general uses, to the guard- 
ianship of the memory. Biology took its place beside the 
older sciences as a most efficient ally in enforcing the 
necessity of acquiring the habit of responsible thinking; 
but it also required in large measure the interpretative 
faculty. The problems of physical life reach beyond the 
experiments of the laboratory, just as the problems of 
human society and of human activities reach back into 



338 MY GENERATION 

the investigations of social research. I followed while in 
the College, and have followed since with great interest, 
the monographs put out from time to time by Professor 
William Patten, in which he has carried over the results 
of his experimentation into the inviting field of interpre- 
tation. On the whole the effect of the new subject-matter 
upon the mind of the College was invigorating and whole- 
some. It tended to produce more intensive and responsible 
thinking. The effect was wider and deeper than could be 
measured by the ordinary tests of scholarship. It was 
difficult to rate it in the terms of the marking system. 
The solution of a problem in mathematics is right or wrong, 
and can be so recorded with due allowance for mistakes 
which do not really inhere in the process ; and so in almost 
equal degree is the answer to a critical question in the 
classics. It is more difficult to weigh the evidence of the 
grasp of a subject, or of its practical or philosophical ap- 
plication, in the thought of a student. What is often ap- 
parent, however, is a certain cumulative effect of a subject I 
upon the student himself. The test really comes within 
the category of morale. 

The elective system itself needed considerable modifi- 
cation to enable it to realize its moral intent. As a system 
of unrestricted freedom it was liable to misuse and to 
over-use. It might be used to evade the harder subjects, or 
in the interest altogether of vocational subjects. One 
might wander at will amongst the elementary courses, or 
one might take a straight and narrow path to some pro- 
fessional end. Certain restrictions were necessary to give 
the system its proper effect: one, the retention of some 
compulsory elementary courses; another, the arrange- 
ment of the curriculum in groups of subjects which must 



♦I 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 339 

be recognized in the choice made; another still, the re- 
quirement that one must reach advanced standing of high 
grade in a certain number of subjects in order to receive 
a degree. These restrictions and requirements coupled 
with one's personal choices out of the general curriculum, 
became a matter of no little study in itself. To a scholar, 
it was an invitation to take the best the College afforded. 
To the average student, it was a summons to gird himself 
for the essential business of a college man. When the 
system failed to awaken the natural interest which might 
have been expected, it remained still a challenge to the 
will to assert itself. When it failed to awaken interest or 
arouse the will, it failed altogether and had no advantage 
above the system of compulsory discipline which it had dis- 
placed, if indeed it reached to that academic level. Inci- 
dentally, it may be said that the elective system did much 
to develop a natural intimacy between instructors and 
students. Students elected instructors as well as subjects, 
in some cases preferably the instructor. But in either case, 
the instructor had the right to assume that, so far as the 
election was free and open, the men before him were his 
men with whom he might enter into a sincere academic 
friendship. 

In contrast with the work of an instructor, the work 
of an administrative official seemed impersonal, and so it 
was to me, in spite of the fact that on occasions the presi- 
dent could come into closer and more intimate relation 
with students than the faculty or any member of it. I had 
anticipated and had tried to discount this more impersonal 
character of administrative work; still I was so far un- 
satisfied with the practical result that I determined to find 
some legitimate way of free access to the "mind of the 



340 MY GENERATION 

College." I regarded this phrase of Dr. Jowett of Balliol as 
the most significant of all purely academic designations, 
whether applied to the college in a collective sense, or to 
emphasize its intellectual distinction. The one opportunity 
at Dartmouth within reach of the President for definite 
and constant access to the mind of the College lay in the 
use of the chapel service, which by tradition fell to his lot. 
Could this service be made to satisfy the desire for as 
distinct and well-defined a contact with the student mind 
as could be made through the classroom and the curricu- 
lum? In one respect, it had manifestly the advantage; it 
gave access to the student body as a whole and could be 
utilized in the interest of college unity. But how about the 
possibility of reacting through it into the deeper and more 
individual workings of the college mind, of meeting its 
more personal necessities, of interpreting men to them- 
selves.'^ I resolved to find the answer to this question in the 
treatment of the Sunday Vesper Service in Rollins Chapel; 
and for the suflBcient test of the answer, I allowed no en- 
gagement for Sunday to interfere with this fixed engage- 
ment. I resolved also that except in cases where some 
consecutive treatment of a subject was necessary, each 
service should have the freedom of subject to which it 
might seem to be entitled. It remained only that I should 
hold consistently to certain objects which, though per- 
sonal and unannounced, should guide me in the conduct of 
the service and in the choice of subjects. The time allotted 
in the service for direct address was fifteen minutes — an 
allowance which I determined should not be exceeded, re- 
garding adherence to it to be as much a matter of intel- 
lectual discipline on my part, as of honest conformity to 
academic limitations. The honesties which inhere in the 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 341 

use of time are taught and practiced more faithfully in 
the classroom than in the pulpit. 

I did not assume in this determination to gain access to 
the mind of the College, that I had the full understanding 
of it. It was to be a matter of continued study; but I was 
quite sure of the fact, since stated with fine discrimination 
by President Lowell, that "college work may affect the 
fortunes of a life-time more profoundly than the studies 
of boyhood or of the professional school, but the ordinary 
student does not know it." This unrealized meaning of the 
college discipline is a state of mind to be recognized but 
not accepted. Full realization may not be expected and 
premature realization is not to be desired, but the process 
of self-realization in and through the environment of the 
College is a part, and a very important part, of the process 
of education. The work of the College in all of its depart- 
ments tended, of course, directly or indirectly to this end; 
but as I saw the situation, there were definite points of 
which the classroom could not take cognizance or upon 
which it could not lay sufficient emphasis. It seemed to 
me to be necessary, as a complement to the work of the 
classroom, that there should be some direct and authorized 
endeavor to stir up the mind of the College to the under- 
standing of the meaning of its own personality, individual 
and collective; to keep its mind open and sensitive to that 
human world of which it was a part, though for a while 
detached, that in due time it might enter more fully into 
its life; and also to give the mind of the College some 
vision of that larger environment, whose boundaries are 
discernible and accessible to faith. In other words, there 
was need of some agency in and of the College which 
should pursue in all fitting variety of form the one object. 



342 MY GENERATION 

to interpret and quicken the sense of the personal, the 
sense of the human as felt in the life of the world, and the 
religious sense. As the situation then was at Dartmouth, 
this specific task fell, as I have said, to the lot of the 
President, and I accepted it as an opportunity not to be 
set aside. 

In accepting it, however, in this light, I recognized clearly 
the fact that there were certain characteristics of the col- 
lege period which were to be accepted with it, and were 
in no case, even when their liabilities were most evident, 
to be disregarded. In fact they were, as I regarded them, 
rather the necessary conditions of fulfilling the college 
function in the educational system. The first of these con- 
ditions was freedom — freedom as understood elsewhere 
and in other relations. This condition applied especially 
to the development of personality, where on account of 
the transition of the average student from a previous stage 
of restraint, the temptation was at times great to continue 
the process of repression. I found it necessary to keep 
constantly in mind the fact that there could be no awak- 
ening of the mind to the real meaning of personality, with- 
out a quickening of the sense of personal power; and 
further, that in this quickening of the sense of personal 
power, lay the chief safeguard of freedom of thought and 
action. It also seemed necessary to make clear to the 
student mind the distinction between the development 
of individuality and the development of personality — 
the former the measure of the difference between one man 
and another or between one and the many, the latter the 
measure of the fullness of one's own nature. This alone 
when realized, as I sought to show, is the distinction of all 
true greatness; this individualizes the really great man 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 343 

and makes the essential difference between him and other 
men. 

In "Personal Power," published after my retirement, 
I gathered up a considerable number of sermons and ad- 
dresses, in which the spirit and aims of the chapel talks 
were embodied. This volume was not at all a reproduction 
of the chapel talks, for these were entirely informal, but a 
more formal expression of the same purpose and method 
which had guided me in the attempt to develop the sense 
of personality in the college man. 

\ Next to the development of the sense of the personal, I 
put the development of the sense of the human, the sensi- 
tive consciousness, that is, of one's part in the life of the 
world. But here again it was necessary to have regard to a 
characteristic of the college period, in some respects con- 
tradictory in its effect, namely, a certain formal detach- 
ment from the more responsible and burdened life of the 
world. This detachment was a recognized condition of 
the college discipline to insure the command of time, and 
necessary to give the right perspective through which to 
view the world. It implied the possibility not only of seeing 
things in their proper relations and proportions, but also 
the possibility of looking upon them with a mind freed 
from passion and prejudice. But to offset the manifest 
danger from this detachment, there was need of holding 
the mind of the College in serious contact with its larger 
human environment. The thought of the average student 
about the world is quite irresponsible. He turns to the 
outer world for amusement, or if he is poor, for aid to self- 
support. Otherwise his personal interest is limited, and 
seldom passes over into any form of concern for its welfare. 
Of course, the immediate and perhaps more permanent 



344 



MY GENERATION 



loss from any such intellectual or moral indifference falls 
more heavily upon the student himself than upon the 
world. For interest in the broadly human he substitutes, 
though often unconsciously, some form of class conscious- 
ness. His danger is not so much that of relapsing into mere 
individualism as of allowing himself to be segregated in a 
class. This habit once acquired, the pitfalls of a large part 
of the unhumanized world await him — the various pit- 
falls of class consciousness, in place of the broad vital 
consciousness of the human, the social class, the money 
class, the labor class, the party, the profession. His danger 
is really that of becoming a mere fragment, rather than an 
integral part of the life about him. 

"Public-Mindedness," a volume of my public addresses 
on various aspects of good citizenship, reflects the spirit 
and tone of the familiar talks at Rollins Chapel on the 
sense of the human, as a part of the moral equipment of 
the college man in his contact with the world. 

I refer to the religious sense last because it seemed to 
me that it was to be assumed. As the old-time "Preacher" 
put the matter with such convincing finality — Eccle- 
siastes iii: 11 — "He hath made everything beautiful in 
its time : also He hath set eternity in their heart, yet so that 
man cannot find out the work that God hath done from 
the beginning even to the end." This implanting of 
"eternity" in the heart of man, it is to be assumed, has 
made the religious sense an abiding force in the midst 
alike of the distracting beauty of the world, and the be- 
wildering mystery of the universe. There are unrealities 
in many of the conventional beliefs of men, but I know of 
nothing in them to compare with the absolute unreality 
of mere unbelief. But here again, as in the development 







HH*" 


1 


1 


« 


■ 




^Hk^^^^l 


1 


^B^^H^^^H 




1 




ww^^^^^t^^^BEi 


1 




H 




^ ^gg^ -A^^HhM 


1 




H 






H 


H 




^^1 


mP^ 


latj^ 


1 


II m 


1 


1 




m 




I^BNr 


Ifli 


iPW'""! 




I^^^^W^'' 


^ 




llWriii 






1 






IOb^^^I 




1 




^^^^1^ ^il^^iH^n^^H 


^f 




i^^r^^RHD 


■ 




^^^^^9B|^H|fe ^!^!r^9|||^^^HH 


1 




^^BiMl^l^^*^-'''"^IHHHH 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 345 

of the sense of the personal and of the sense of the human, 
it became evident to me that the development of the re- 
ligious sense must accord with the habit of mind induced 
by academic training, namely, the questioning habit. The 
academic approach to a subject, the attack if the subject 
be difficult, is through the question. The question persisted 
in becomes research, and the cumulative result to the 
questioner the scientific habit of mind. But one of the 
unconscious effects is often seen in a certain sag of the 
mind, the easy relapse into a merely questioning mood, in 
which subjects of high moment may be set aside for pos- 
sible consideration without regard to their intrinsic im- 
portance. And this laissez-faire state of mind may be 
coupled with such pride of intellectual freedom as to create 
a well-nigh insufferable conceit. It was doubtless such an 
exhibition of conceit as called out the impatient reply 
of the Master of Balliol to the casual remark of a student 
who presented himself for matriculation, one of the con- 
ditions being the assent of the applicant to an article 
affirming the existence of God, "Well, I haven't made up 
my mind on that subject" — "I'll give you fifteen min- 
utes to make it up." But I always felt that any like ex- 
hibition of ephemeral conceit was to be carefully dis- 
tinguished from doubt. The doubting mind always seemed 
to me to be a part of the believing mind, and to be so 
classed. The genuinely doubting mind welcomes the inter- 
pretation of truth in place of fruitless argument and 
discussion. 

The College Chapel, as I believe, should allow the spirit 
of the philosophical classroom, but it has its own atmo- 
sphere. It seeks not only the demonstration of truth, but 
the impression of truth. Religion has its times and seasons 



346 MY GENERATION 

which may properly be utiHzed. I never hesitated to ob- 
serve the seasons of Advent and Lent for direct rehgious 
impression. Academic rehgion has its limitations, but it is 
not straitened in itself, or in any use of rational means 
for the development of the religious sense. The college 
environment may not shut out that larger environment of 
the human world; much less may it shut out that far 
greater environment which corresponds to the "eternity" 
set in every human heart. 

I hesitate to go further. The remembrances of the fifteen 
years of contact with the mind of the College, through the 
Sunday Vespers in Rollins Chapel, are in many ways too 
personal even for the pages of an autobiography. The 
generations of college men as they came and went, filling 
the rows of the chapel benches, still pass before me in the 
orderly procession of the years. But the service itself as 
a medium of personal contact with the College, may be 
noted as an illustration of one method through which so 
desirable an end may be reached. More frequent use has 
been, and is still being made of the classroom. Other ways 
are yet more individual. Some men have the gifts of the 
"office" quite as marked in their influence as the gifts of 
the "chair." The chapel service came to me as my op- 
portunity, and soon became recognized as such, for seeking 
to affect the college morale. I may therefore quote in this 
connection the opinion of two or three who have put on 
record their lestimate of the meaning of the service. In a 
paper read by Professor Asakawa of Yale at the fifteenth 
reunion of his own class (1899) at Dartmouth, and printed 
in the "Dartmouth Alumni Magazine" of March, 1915, 
the writer enters into a most critical interpretation of this 
particular service rendered by "our teacher," as he applies 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 347 

to me the term of such honor to the Eastern mind. The 
whole paper interprets the intent and method of the serv- 
ice with an insight and understanding which humbled 
me as I read it. I was greatly pleased with this mark of Dr. 
Asakawa's fine discernment: "How many of us realized 
that while we were being stimulated by Dr. Tucker, he 
himself was drawing inspiration from his work for us? 
... So there was give-and-take between him and us; no 
doubt he gave us more than we ever knew, and took 
from us more than we were able to take from him." 

In a brief review of the period of my administration con- 
tributed to the College "^Egis" of 1911, Professor Charles 
F. Richardson gave the following estimate of the relative 
value of this service as compared with the external results 
of the administration: "In my opinion his (President 
Tucker's) largest, most important and enduring achieve- 
ment has been . . . the effect of his personahty and his 
teachings upon . . . the undergraduate body. This influ- 
ence has been made manifest . . . most of all in his Sun- 
day evening talks at Rollins Chapel. These have been 
virtually unique. . . . Every Dartmouth alumnus of the 
past sixteen years will agree with me that whatever he has 
got from the classroom, societies, friendships, or the ath- 
letic field, nothing quite takes the place in his tenderest 
memories of college days, of Dr. Tucker's vesper talks 
Sunday after Sunday." 

I cannot refrain from adding to these expressions of 
opinion from within the College, this interpretation by 
Professor Francis G. Peabody of the characteristics of the 
type of preaching disclosed in the volume of sermons 
based on the chapel service. I am indebted beyond all 
claims of personal friendship for such a recognition of the 



348 MY GENERATION 

purpose of these sermons, by one who is the acknowledged 
master in the college pulpit of New England. Contrasting 
the different methods pursued by English and American 
college preachers in an article on "University Preaching" 
in the "Harvard Theological Review" for April, 1916, he 
passes on to the discussion of the possibility of combining 
the more intimate approach of the American preacher 
with the larger horizon of the English preacher: 

This synthesis of vitality with wisdom, of personal appeal with 
philosophical insight, is not without distinguished illustration in 
the university preaching of the United States. "The Counsels 
to College Men," the sub-title of "Personal Power," by Pres- 
ident Tucker of Dartmouth College, for example (one of sev- 
eral volumes of college sermons referred to), combine in a 
striking degree the intimate approach and the large horizon. 
In their primary concern for students as hearers they depart 
from the English tradition; but in their sweep of thought and 
large conclusions they are of the school of Newman and Mozley. 
"Let me speak to you of the satisfactions of life," begins one of 
these discourses, as though preacher and student stood together 
on the level of ordinary experience; but the same sermon ends 
on the heights of mature and prophetic vision: "The modern 
world will not long be the world which marked a sudden shift 
from medisevalism. The reaction is spent. Neither is it the 
world of raw force or of rank material power. The noise and 
smoke of its work, its sudden and unstable wealth, its pride 
and vain-glory, its impossible art, its commercialized morals, its 
crude, self-sufficient, unbelieving men — all these are fast going 
the way of their kind. These do not make up the world of to- 
morrow, the world in which yom* achievements are to be ranked 
and in which you are to be measured. You are in a world which 
will have ample room in it for the intellectual life, for rewarding 
action of every kind, for sincere and satisfying companionship, 
and for faith. Do not miss your place in it. Do not live out of 
date. Make your own generation. Take the better fortune of 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 349 

your own time." Again the same preacher begins, with persua- 
sive simplicity, " I want to speak to you about Jesus' test of 
moral maturity " ; but near its close he rises to the passage: 
" I count it a great moral obligation of all believing men to 
have faith in the working power of Christ's sayings. . . . Be- 
lieve in men against appearances. Do not take men at their 
word when they talk below themselves. Use the true, never 
the false in human nature, and persist m doing this. So shall 
you gain access, every one of you in his own way, to the heart 
of humanity." Here is movement, lift, enlargement, surprise. 
Through the narrow door of personal experience the hearer is 
led into the great temple of a rational faith. Moral inspiration 
and intellectual precision meet, and from their fusion proceed 
light, heat, and power. 

V 

An Advanced Policy toward Non-Professional Graduates 

College education in this country was from the very 
beginning set to some definite end outside and beyond 
itself. This end has been for the most part satisfied in the 
relation of the colleges to the professions. A liberal educa- 
tion has never been allowed to become the mere perquisite 
of a leisure class. We have accepted the English require- 
ment that it must be "fit for a gentleman," but we have 
added the implication — a gentleman at work. With us 
the natural complement of a liberal education has been a 
professional life. 

Dartmouth has always kept faith with the professions, 
and never more strictly than in support of the recent 
efforts for the advancement of professional standards. 
There have been times, it is true, of an unapprehended 
danger to the promotion of professional standards from 
the stirrings of the university idea. The position of Dart- 
mouth, relatively remote from the centers, but central to 



35° 



MY GENERATION 



a large and somewhat distinct territory, has frequently 
suggested the ambition to assume the functions of a 
university, which if realized would have added one more 
to the aggregation of minor professional schools. The 
presence of the medical school, existing almost from the 
first in various relations to the College, has been a local 
reminder of natural possibilities in this direction. Even 
so sane a mind as that of President Lord was at one time 
seriously infected with the university idea. In 1841, stim- 
ulated by the largest enrollment in the history of the Col- 
lege, placing it on a full numerical equality with any of 
the New England colleges, he urged upon the Trustees the 
restoration of the Chair of Divinity to active use, saying 
that "another step," referring to the possible provision 
for a law professorship, "will then place the College in the 
position of a university, to which Divine Providence has 
been so evidently leading it, and for which public opinion 
is in a great degree prepared." The unaccountable decline 
in the number of students which soon followed, though 
temporary, and the consequent decline in current income, 
put the project permanently out of thought during his 
administration. The "idea," however, survived in a plan 
to organize a "learned Society that should be nearly re- 
lated to the College and serve to concentrate upon it the 
moral and intellectual resources of the Northern part of 
New England." This plan was consummated in the or- 
ganization of the Northern Academy, which flourished for 
quite a number of years as a literary society, and later was 
resumed for a time as a scientific society, finally leaving as 
its memorial a creditable collection of literary and scien-1 
tific works to be absorbed into the college library. 

The university idea made a still stronger appeal to the 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 351 

vivid imagination of President Smith, and during his ad- 
ministration came much nearer to realization. It was his 
aim to concentrate the higher educational interests of the 
State at Hanover, and through his efforts the New Hamp- 
shire College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts was 
first located there. The Thayer School was established in 
his administration practically on the basis of a graduate 
school. There was the definite promise, according to public 
announcement, of three large bequests which had they 
become available in his time, would have materially aided 
in the working-out of his large plans. Their failure to 
"arrive" till it was too late for his uses, was a pathetic 
illustration of the saying as applied to successions in a 
college presidency — "one soweth and another reapeth." 
The subsequent removal of the Agricultural College to 
Durham, which took place just before the close of Pres- 
ident Bartlett's admmistration, closed the door to further 
efforts in behalf of a university based on State needs or 
resources. The sympathies and activities of President 
Bartlett were altogether in favor of the development of 
the College as such. It was through his negotiation with 
the heirs of the estate of Chief Justice Joel Parker that the 
bequest left to the College for the establishment of a Law 
School was converted into the foundation of a professor- 
ship of Law and Political Science, and into a library fund 
for its uses. I recall, however, in the early part of my ad- 
ministration, a correspondence with one of our ablest legal 
graduates, Professor William C. Robinson of the Yale 
Law School, urging upon me the recovery of this fund to 
its first proposed use, with an appeal to the alumni and 
to the State to supplement the fund with an amount suf- 
ficient for the endowment of a School. He urged this on 



352 MY GENERATION 

the ground largely of state advantage, declaring that New 
Hampshire was, with one exception, the only State in the 
Union without a law school. I replied that I failed to see 
the local necessity in view of the proximity of neighboring 
schools of recognized merit, and that I could not advise 
the establishment of a law school in connection with 
Dartmouth which might fall below their standard. I 
argued that Dartmouth in this matter owed more to the 
profession than to the State. 

In regard to the Medical School, so long and honorably 
identified with the College, it may be said that it was 
brought step by step into harmony with the progress of' 
medical instruction — first in 1890, near the close of 
President Bartlett's administration, by making it a four 
years' course, then some years later during my adminis- 
tration, by requiring a college training or its equivalent 
for admission, and finally in President Nichols's adminis- 
tration, being unable to satisfy the full requirements of 
the American Medical Association in the matter of hospital 
service, by giving up the last two years, that the school 
might retain in the first two years its A standing among 
the schools. 

For the teaching profession, the College has not at- 
tempted to establish a Graduate School. Graduate study 
has been confined to a few departments which have had 
at times special facilities for carrying it on successfully. 

In one way or other — in its earlier history by the force 
of circumstances and in later times by fixed purpose — 
Dartmouth had been preserved from becoming the danger 
to the professions which the small university, with its 
inferior facilities for reaching the higher professional 
standards, presents. In its numerical accounting with the 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 353 

professions, the account of Dartmouth represented very 
nearly the entire contribution of its graduates, until the 
responsibility of the College to its non-professional grad- 
uates became more urgent, if not more important. 

When I recall the historic position of Dartmouth and 
its relation to the apparently conflicting demands of lib- 
eral and professional education, I am ready to accept in 
its behalf the congratulatory words of President Hadley 
of Yale on the occasion of the rebuilding of Dartmouth 
Hall: "Yale sends congratulations on the rebuilding of 
what has been in many senses a historical edifice in the 
American college world. For nearly three half-centuries 
Dartmouth has occupied an exceptional position: in the 
first generation as the northern outpost of American 
science and religion — like Durham of old; 

Half house of God, half castle 'gainst the Scot; 

in the next generation as the training place of one who, 
amid his many titles to fame and honor, has this special 
claim upon the remembrance of American scholars, that 
his efforts made our college charters eternally secure; and 
during later generations as an institution whose work for 
the cause of higher learning is thrown into salient relief 
by the fact that where so many institutions claim to do 
more than they actually accomplish, Dartmouth accom- 
plishes more than she claims." 

In the closing decade of the last century a marked 
change in the occupations of college graduates took place, 
or rather became almost startlingly apparent. A profession 
was no longer the exclusive goal. A new and large area 
of occupation had been entered upon under the general 
term of business. From the conventional point of view of 



354 MY GENERATION 

the professions, the colleges were producing the "excess" 
graduate. 

Comparing the statistics for the first two periods of 
fifty years each in the productive energy of Dartmouth 
with the thirty years immediately following, which brought 
the College to the close of the century, we have this result 
— from 1771-1820, graduates entering the professions of 
law, ministry, teaching, and medicine, ninety per cent; 
from 1821-1870, eighty-six per cent; from 1871 to 1900, 
sixty-four per cent. The sharpness of the change is seen 
in the further drop in the succeeding decade, the open- 
ing decade of the present century, from sixty-four per 
cent to fifty-one per cent. The change here noted in re- 
spect to Dartmouth was representative of that which was 
taking place in all the Eastern colleges, the real signifi- 
cance of which was not to be estimated in numbers. The 
change meant that the colleges representing a liberal 
education were failing to make a responsible connection, 
through the lack of a proper intervening training, with 
the world of affairs. The interests in that newer world 
were quite comparable with those involved in professional 
life — banking, corporate administration, and all the prob- 
lems incident to the economic development of the coun- 
try. It was a confession of the inutility or narrowness of 
a liberal education, for the colleges to leave their gradu- 
ates in a helpless attitude before their new responsibilities, 
or to commit them altogether to the fortune of their per- 
sonal initiative. The introduction of so-called "business 
courses" into the undergraduate curriculum was evidently 
a superficial and confusing treatment of the difiiculty. 

It was in the attempt to offer some satisfactory solution 
of the problem confronting the colleges that the Amos 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 355 

Tuck School of Administration and Finance had its origin. 
In the specifications attending the gift of the Tuck fund, 
provision had been made for the possible uses, in part, of 
the income from the fund for "professorships which may- 
be in the future established in the College proper or in 
post-graduate departments, should such be added at any 
time to the regular college course." As it had been de- 
termined to apply the income of the Tuck fund mainly 
to the Department of Economics and kindred depart- 
ments, it was now proposed to carry over the instruction 
in these departments into advanced courses which should 
constitute the basis of a graduate school. I was authorized 
by the Trustees to put this proposed action before Mr. 
Tuck, to ascertain if it would accord with his understand- 
ing of the uses of the Fund. This I did in a letter under 
date of December 1, 1899, enclosing a memorandum out- 
lining the aim and methods of the proposed school. In 
response I received the cablegram — "Letter received. 
Fully approve proposed action in all points"; and later by 
letter the following endorsement of the plan: 

The establishment of the Amos Tuck School of Administra- 
tion and Finance has my fuU approval. The statement which 
you make of its purpose and scope is clear and convincing. I 
believe that it is just in the line of modern educational require- 
ments and I shall be glad to see your plan put into effect. 

At a meeting of the Trustees, held June 19, 1900, it was 
voted, "that the Trustees establish The Amos Tuck 
School of Administration and Finance, on the following 
outlines, presented by the President ": 

Under the terms of the Amos Tuck Endowment Fund, the 
gift by Mr. Edward Tuck, of the Class of 1862, of the sum of 



356 MY GENERATION 

Three Hundred Thousand Dollars as a memorial to his father, 
the Hon. Amos Tuck of the Class of 1835, and a Trustee of the 
College from 1857 to 1866, especial provision was made for the 
"establishment of additional professorships within the College 
proper or in graduate departments." In accordance with this 
provision of the endowment fund for additional instruction in 
undergraduate and graduate courses, and with the approval of 
the donor, the Trustees of Dartmouth College hereby create the 
Amos Tuck School of Administration and Finance. 

First, This school is established in the interest of college 
graduates who desire to engage in affairs rather than enter the 
professions. It is the aim of the school to prepare men in those 
fundamental principles which determine the conduct of affairs, 
and to give specific instruction in the laws pertaining to prop- 
erty, in the management of trusts and investments, in the 
problems of taxation and currency, in the methods of corporate 
and municipal administration, and in subjects connected with 
the civil and consular service. The attempt will be made to 
follow the increasing number of college graduates who have in 
view administrative or financial careers, with a preparation 
equivalent in its purpose to that obtained in the professional or 
technical schools. The training of the school is not designed to 
take the place of an apprenticeship in any given business, but it 
is believed that the same amount of academic training is called 
for, under the enlarging demands of business, as for the pro- 
fessions or for the productive industries. 

Second. The school is open to those who present a Bachelor's 
degree and in special cases to those who are able to pass an ex- 
amination which will guarantee an equal fitness for the studies 
to be pursued. The courses which are now offered cover two 
years of graduate study. If a student is able to present courses 
taken as advanced electives in the undergraduate curriculum 
which are substantially the same as those offered in the first 
year, he will be given standing in the second year. Special stu- 
dents may be received for the pursuit of particular courses who 
will be given certificates for work actually accomplished, but 
who will not receive the full certification or degree of the school. 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 357 

Third. The courses of study pursued within the school shall 
be chiefly those which lie within the departments of Modern 
History, Economics, Sociology, Political Science and Law, to- 
gether with the departments of modern languages. In all cases 
the work of the school shall represent advanced courses in these 
departments. In the first year the courses shall be largely the- 
oretical; in the second year they shall represent the application 
of theory to particular forms of business so far as practicable. 

Fourth. The work of the school shall be carried on by in- 
structors in Dartmouth College within the departments above 
named, with the assistance of special instructors or lecturers on 
definite topics which may be prescribed. In so far as instructors 
in the academic department of the College take part in the in- 
struction of the school it shall be without extra compensation. 
[This specification was later amended to provide in large degree 
for separate instructors in the school.] 

Fifth. Tuition for the school shall be the same as for the col- 
lege, but scholarships given for students in the College shall not 
be available for students in the school, except for those who may 
be enrolled during the first year both in the College and in the 
school. 

The school having been organized and preparations 
made for instruction the following year, Mr. Tuck supple- 
mented his original gift by the transfer of securities for the 
erection of a suitable building for the school. Under date 
of August 29, 1901, he wrote: 

I am now sending you certificates for Five Hundred shares, pre- 
ferred stock of the Great Northern Railway Company of Minne- 
sota, registered in the name of "The Trustees of Dartmouth 
College," to be added to the "Amos Tuck Endowment Fund." 

The purpose of this donation is to supply the necessary means 
for erecting, equipping and maintaining a building suited to the 
uses of the Tuck School of Administration and Finance, and 
incidentally for the accommodation of such other kindred de- 
partments of the College as the Trustees may deem wise and 
appropriate. 



358 MY GENERATION 

To the correspondence of Mr. Tuck regarding the es- 
tabhshment of the school should be added his statement 
of the ethical purpose which should inspire alike instruc- 
tors and graduates. This statement is inscribed on a 
tablet placed midway on the double stairway opposite 
the entrance to the building: 

In the conduct of the school to which you have done my 
father's memory the honor of attaching his name, I trust that 
certain elementary but vital principles, on which he greatly 
dwelt in his advice to young men, whether entering upon a pro- 
fessional or business career, may not be lost sight of in the 
variety of technical subjects of which the regular curriculum is 
composed. Briefly, these principles or maxims are: absolute de- 
votion to the career which one selects, and to the interests of 
one's superiors or employers; the desire and determination to 
do more rather than less than one's required duties; perfect 
accuracy and promptness in all undertakings, and absence from 
one's vocabulary of the word "forget"; never to vary a hair's 
breadth from the truth nor from the path of strictest honesty 
and honor, with perfect confidence in the wisdom of doing right 
as the surest means of achieving success. To the maxim that 
honesty is the best policy should be added another: that altruism 
is the highest and best form of egoism as a principle of conduct 
to be followed by those who strive for success and happiness in 
public or business relations as well as in those of private life. 

In establishing the Tuck School as a school of advanced 
instruction, the College took a step in the exercise of the 
creative function of liberal education. Once before it ha(l| 
moved, though not so directly upon its own initiative, in 
the same direction. When General Sylvanus Thayer, a 
graduate of the class of 1807, known at West Point as 
the "Father of the Military Academy," sought for some 
definite way of advancing Civil Engineering to the grade 
of the professions, he turned to his Alma Mater for aid. 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 359 

What he wanted to secure was the breadth and stimulus 
of a Hberal education in the furtherance of his purpose. 
At his request the College became the "trustee" of the 
fund which he had set apart for the endowment of a grad- 
uate school. The virtual control of the school was to rest 
with a Board of Overseers, first to be appointed by him- 
self and then to be self-perpetuating, the President of the 
College to be president of the Board. This was in 1874. 
The Trustees of the College assented to the arrangement, 
which proved to be highly advantageous to both parties. 
In 1908, the Trustees recognized the School as consti- 
tuting "in fact and substance a post-graduate course or 
department of the College." 

The success of the Thayer School in helping to carry 
out the aim of its founder was in mind when the thought 
of a school of like aims in the sphere of Finance began to 
take shape. There were, however, two causes which gave 
a certain immediacy to the establishment of the Tuck 
School — first the urgency of the situation, and second 
the willing response of Mr. Tuck to the proposal. These 
two causes were the justification, the ample justification, 
for the prompt exercise of what I have termed the creative 
function of liberal education. 

But the broad educational reason for such an invasion 
of the business world as that carried out through the Tuck 
School, lay in the fact that the higher education was work- 
ing very unequally in that unclassified region. The tech- 
nical schools were at work for a definite purpose. Their 
training created a habit of mind of great value : but there 
was need of another habit of mind which might work with 
equal definiteness. If there were occupations of high grade 
which required the rigidly scientific habit, there were other 



360 MY GENERATION 

occupations wliicli required the habit of analysis, com- 
parison, and coordination. This was the habit requisite to 
large success in the economic field. It was by distinction 
the habit sought to be produced by a liberal education. 
And a further demand of the economic field was for mind 
trained in the consideration of the human element in the 
practical world. Questions of labor were as much a part of 
the economic problem as questions of finance. Modern 
science had created the industrial world, it had become a 
matter of economic concern to humanize it. 

I cannot put by this conception of the creative, inform- 
ing, humanizing function of a liberal education without 
emphasizing the present need of the continuous exercise 
in some form of this function, by those who may be assumed 
to know its use. There is a habit of mind among the grad- 
uates of our colleges, which fosters too much the idea of 
the immunity of a liberal education from the distracting 
and disintegrating influences of modern thought and life. 
I know of but one way to break up this habit, namely, 
for the colleges to follow their graduates with the stim- 
ulus of the education of which they may be made more 
appreciative than they were in their undergraduate days; 
to go in and out among them with the liberating and lib- 
eralizing idea which they may never have really under- 
stood; to make them feel, it may be, through their own 
belated experiences the vital and far-reaching influence 
of the liberal education, if it be given the freedom of the 
modern world. With this view of present educational ne- 
cessities, I read with great interest the recent announce- 
ment of President Hopkins of the founding of two ample 
lectureships for the special object of stimulating the 
intellectual life of the alumni, through the perpetuation 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 361 

of the original impulse which sent them to college, act- 
ing now in a vastly wider environment. I quote the an- 
nouncement from the report in the "Dartmouth Alumni 
Magazine" of the exercises at the dinner following the 
Commencement of 1917 : 

I have the privilege of announcing another gift to the College 
from one of its most loyal alumni, in the establishment of two 
lectureships of major import, designed primarily for the alumni 
of Dartmouth College, and open to students of the College or 
friends who may wish to utilize the advantages of the scheme 
as proposed. This is made possible through the generosity of Mr. 
Henry L. Moore, one of the trustees of the College, and a grad- 
uate of the class of '77 now celebrating its fortieth anniversary. 

The lectureships will be known as " The Dartmouth Alumni 
Lectureships on the Guernsey Center Moore Foundation," and 
they are established in loving remembrance of Mr. Moore's son, 
a member of the class of 1904, whose sad death occurred early 
in his course. 

This gift is an extension on Mr. Moore's part of the principle to 
which he committed himself more than ten years ago, in accord- 
ance with the advice of President Tucker, that great good could 
be done the College by the donating of such funds as Mr. Moore 
found himself able to give the College for the purpose of its cul- 
tural advantage. In accordance with this desire on the part of 
the donor, the frequent gifts to the College from him have been 
applied to the development of the work in Fine Arts. It is a 
logical and profitable extension of such an interest that now 
makes available for alumni and friends of the College a cultural 
opportunity to sit under leaders of the world's thought, who 
may be secured to speak on various themes with which the pur- 
poses of the College concern themselves. The tentative plan is 
something like this, — that the lectures shall be given annually 
by two men of the highest distinction in their respective fields. 
They will occur daily, five days in the week, for two weeks, — a 
total of ten lectures from each man. It is expected that this will 
be an opportunity eagerly seized upon by men as they come to 



362 MY GENERATION 



1 

eateiai 



understand in regard to it, and working to greater and greate: 
advantage of the alumni of the College in eliminating the present 
anomalous condition, in which the College makes no attempt 
whatsoever to perpetuate its cultural influence on its graduates 
after the date upon which they receive their diplomas. 

Some colleges, placed within large cities, do extension work 
in their own communities; and others, administered under 
state auspices, render large service to their state constituencies. 
Mr. Moore's plan, however, projects an extension work for the 
benefit of college graduates, and men whose interests lead them 
into these groups. The proposal is based on the argument that, 
if the College has conviction that its influence is worth seeking 
at the expense of four vital years in the formative period of a 
man's life, the College ought to offer some method of giving 
access to this influence to its graduates in their subsequent years. 
Moreover, the growing practice of retiring men from active 
work at ages from sixty-five to seventy, and the not infrequent 
tragedy of the man who has no resources for interesting himself 
outside the routine of which he has been relieved, make it seem 
that the College has no less an opportunity to be of service to 
its men in their old age than in their youth, if only it can es- 
tablish the procedure by which it can periodically throughout 
their lives give them opportunity to replenish their intellectual 
reserves. 

Mr, Moore's assurance to the trustees has been that he would 
be glad to make the income of $100,000 available to the College 
for a period of years, for the support of this plan ; and if the plan 
should prove to have the advantage that it is expected to have, 
that he would then transfer the principal to the College, thus 
insuring permanency to the project. 

VI 

Professional and Public Relations during the Presidency 

The college presidency is an anomaly among the pro- 
fessions. In and of itself it has no professional standing. 
Whoever occupies it must furnish his own professional 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 363 

guarantees. The multiplicity of academic degrees with 
which the average college president is invested has in 
this respect no significance. Academic degrees are of three 
kinds — the earned degree which defines one professionally; 
the honorary degree bestowed presumably for professional 
excellence, most happily bestowed when it is a reward for 
excellence without the aid of academic training and the 
complimentary degree of which college presidents are 
made the unhappy recipients as the representatives of 
their respective colleges. The custom of the past one or 
two decades of making the inauguration of a college pres- 
ident the occasion for conferring degrees upon all within 
the reach of the particular academic fellowship, so far as 
time allows, has ceased to be significant or impressive. It 
is a custom which as "honored in the breach" confers 
honor upon the college that exercises a becoming self-re- 
straint. 

It is, of course, an infelicity that there is no authorized 
academic approach to a college presidency, not even 
through the faculty. Neither teaching nor research can 
give the requisite training for administration. There are 
indications of the growing recognition of the normal path 
to administrative responsibility through some form of 
direct administrative training. Examples of the tendency 
are to be seen in the recent election of Secretary Hopkins, 
though after a short period of executive service elsewhere, 
to the presidency of Dartmouth, and of Dean Sills to the 
presidency of Bowdoin. Doubtless in due time a college 
presidency will evolve or acquire its own professional 
standing. Meanwhile the distinguishing feature of a college 
presidency in the place allotted to it by courtesy among the 
professions is the ground it covers. No profession has the 



364 MY GENERATION 

same variety of semi-public duties assigned to it or ex- 
pected of it. The public expectation is not infrequently 
embarrassing as it finds expression in the neatly turned 
compliment. In introducing me, soon after my advent at 
Dartmouth, as a speaker at the dedication of the new state 
library building of New Hampshire, the presiding officer 
made use very graciously of the epigram of Macaulay on 
Sir William Temple. "I think," he said, "that I may adopt 
the words of the brilliant essayist and historian in intro- 
ducing to you Dr. Tucker, President of Dartmouth — 'a 
man of the world among men of letters, and a man of 
letters among men of the world.'" However much I might 
have been disposed to disclaim the right to a place in the 
historic succession to this epigram, I could not deny its 
pertinence as expressing the public estimate of the sup- 
posed fitness for the position I had assumed. 

When one's professional career is broken in upon mid- 
way, through a sudden change in work, it is inevitable that 
some unfinished tasks or unfulfilled engagements must be 
carried over into the new work. The sudden change from 
Andover to Dartmouth found me under certain obligations 
of which I could not at once divest myself. I have referred 
to the fact that I had been obliged to ask for a year's de- 
ferment of my engagement at the Lowell Institute. The 
deferred date was reached in the winter of my first year 
at Dartmouth. The engagement was for eight lectures at 
Huntington Hall on Monday and Thursday evenings of 1, 
successive weeks. As I had been unable to make full ■ 
preparation in advance, especially in the writing of the 
lectures, I found it necessary to absent myself from the 
college for a month, taking up my quarters at the Parker 
House, where I had become much at home, and devoting 




PRESIDENT TUCKER, 1899 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 365 

myself with little time for anything else to the continuous 
and strenuous work before me. I need hardly say that it 
was of absorbing interest. The subject which Mr. Lowell 
had chosen — "The Influence of Religion To-day" — I 
construed to mean the power of religion to make its in- 
fluence felt at a time marked by the partial suspension of 
its authority. The lectures were fully reported in the daily 
papers. The Boston correspondent of the "Outlook," 
Julius H. Ward, on the staff of the "Herald," gave the 
following summary of the course, leading into a discussion 
of the treatment of the several topics : 

The aim of President Tucker in these lectures has been not to 
discuss organized religion and ecclesiasticism, but to recognize 
the religious spirit wherever it exists, and to show by significant 
illustrations in what direction religious thought is moving and 
working in our own time. It has been notable, as these lectures 
have proceeded, how skillfully Dr. Tucker has unloaded the- 
r ological baggage and got down to the real point of things. He 
escaped at once from the environment of formal religion by 
taking a certain point of view. This will be perhaps best seen 
by a summary of the titles of the lectures in succession. The first 
was on the direction of spiritual influence to-day; the second 
was on religion as it expresses itself through the " enthusiasm 
for humanity"; the third took up religion as the reformer of 
theology, passing beyond its organized forms, the fourth traced 
the development and bearings of agnosticism; the fifth traced 
the growth and the bearings of secularism; the sixth took up the 
present significance of religious toleration; the seventh treated 
the reciprocity of religions, and showed the mutual influence of 
the diverse minds and races now coming into religious contact; 
and the eighth treated of religious unity as waiting the coming 
of the full conception of the kingdom of God. 

The preparation and delivery of these lectures, though 
as I have said a very strenuous piece of work, was to me 



366 MY GENERATION 

an intellectual stimulus and refreshment, and not without 
a certain advantage to the College, in relating it more 
directly as an institution to the intellectual life of Boston. 
As the "Advertiser" remarked — "Dartmouth has long 
been prominent in Boston through her graduates ; now for 
the first time it is beginning to be felt through the distinct 
personal contact of her president" — a remark, however, 
not strictly true, if intended to include the college Fac- 
ulty. Professor Samuel Oilman Brown gave a course at 
the Lowell Institute during my college course on "English 
Parliamentary Orators," which he repeated, according to 
my vivid recollection, in the old College Church. 

For a time after removing to Hanover I must have con- 
tinued to preach, as circumstances in the College allowed, 
as I find by the following letter from Dr. Cabot, which 
gives some indication of the diflficulties I experienced in 
giving over many of the personal associations I had formed 
in the frequent supply of pulpits in Boston and vicinity. 



Massachusetts General Hospital 
April 17, 1894 
Dear Sir, 

I heard your sermons of last Sunday, and feel that I ought to 
WT-ite to you about them. 

I have heard a great many sermons in the last ten years and 
have inevitably listened to them in the light of my scientific and 
philosophic study. Although I have profited by many of them, 
the larger portion have seemed to lose something of the weight 
they ought to have for the lack either of certainty, or of the 
grounds for certainty in the speaker's mind. Those who trusted 
their truth, did so, it seemed to me, too often on insufficient evi- 
dence; while those who had sifted the evidence more consci- 
entiously, had not attained to such fulness of belief as could 
establish confidence in their hearers. 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 367 

Therefore it marks an epoch in my life to come in contact with 
a man who is as sure of his truth as you are, and upon such good 
grounds. There seems to me to be a great hunger among the 
people I see for just what you give, — a rational Christianity. 
We have so much rationahsm that is unchristian, and so much 
Christianity that is not rational in Boston that many have come 
to the belief that a rational Christianity is impossible. 

I suppose any man cares to know as far as he can that his work 
is effective. It seems to me that such sermons as you preached 
last Sunday are more important and more helpful to the present 
generation in the present phase of their development than any 
single influence I know of. That they should impress me — an 
average listener — so deeply, and that I should hear of them from 
other physicians and from most of the educated men to whom I 
have spoken of them, as producing a similar effect on them, 
seems to me a fact in which you might justly take satisfaction. 
My only regret is that you are not established where Boston can 
hear more of you. 

I thank you with all my heart for your sermons and for all that 
they stand as results of. 

Yours sincerely 

Richard C. Cabot, M.D. 

I greatly value this letter as showing the stimulus to a 
preacher in the spirit and attitude of many of the most 
highly trained and discriminating minds towards religious 
truth. 

My personal connection with certain local interests in 
Boston was maintained for a considerable time through 
my continued identification with the Andover (South 
End) House; and until now my knowledge of those inter- 
ests and affairs which I have had most in mind, has been 
maintained through my uninterrupted intimacy with Mr. 
Robert A. Woods, the Head of the House. 

Another deferred engagement was that of service on the 



368 MY GENERATION 

Harvard Board of Preachers. This service was quite dif- 
ferent from occasional preaching at Appleton Chapel, 
calling for three weeks of daily attendance at the Uni- 
versity twice a year, and including the Sundays at Apple- 
ton Chapel, the daily conduct of morning chapel with a 
brief address, daily office hours during the forenoon at 
Wadsworth House, following the service in the Chapel. 
Through the considerate kindness of Professor Peabody, I 
was relieved of half of the engagement ; and the engagement 
itself had more than a compensation in the friendly inter- 
change of services which brought Professor Peabody to 
the Dartmouth Board of Preachers, and Professor George 
H. Palmer to a lectureship for two successive years in the 
Department of Philosophy. 

Still another deferred engagement I have taken note 
of in another connection, the delivery in 1898 of the Yale 
Lectures on Preaching, on the Lyman Beecher Founda- 
tion. The subject of this course of lectures was "The Mak- 
ing and the Unmaking of the Preacher." The lectures were 
published under the above title by Houghton Mifflin 
Company. 

I make reference because of the connection to yet an- 
other course of lectures, not at all a deferred engagement, 
but given in response to an invitation from the Directors 
and Faculty of Union Seminary, on the Morse Founda- 
tion, which found me in a willing mood on account of a fit 
subject that had for some time occupied my mind in its 
freer hours, namely, the distinctive problem of modern 
Christianity. I think that my interest in this particular 
problem started from a remark by Mr. Huxley to the 
effect that the world in which he lived for the most 
part was neither Christian nor unchristian, but extra- 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 369 

Christian. What was, or should be the definite relation of 
Christianity to this extra-Christian world? This was an 
intensely practical question, for this extra-Christian world 
of Mr. Huxley's evidently corresponded quite closely to 
what we had begun to know as the modern world, a cre- 
ative world, vital with forces which are in themselves the 
sources of human progress. But Christianity is a religion, 
the only religion, which undertakes to deal with man as the 
subject of progress whatever may he the sources of progress. 
What then shall be its relation to the modern world whose 
progress is due so largely to causes outside the action of 
forces peculiar to Christianity.? The lectures on this sub- 
ject were given in New York in 1902, under the broad title 
of "Modern Christianity" — by no means so common- 
place or broad a subject then as now. I had hoped, as in- 
deed it was the understanding, that I should make a book 
out of them, reducing the subject-matter more strictly 
to a critical study of the problem involved in the present 
environment of Christianity, so different in its effect from 
any which had preceded. But the book was never written, 
owing to the increasing pressure of college duties. I was 
able, however, through the courtesy of Union Seminary, 
to repeat the lectures, in modified form, on the Earle 
Foundation at the Pacific Theological Seminary, Berkeley, 
California. This was in 1906. 1 recall with peculiar pleasure 
the visit to Berkeley — the outward trip by the Santa Fe, 
though we missed for lack of time the Grand Canyon, the 
provision made for Mrs. Tucker and myself at Cloyne 
Court, the association with the University, and especially 
my intercourse with the faculty of the Seminary. One could 
not ask for a season of professional companionship char- 
acterized by a truer spirit of hospitality, by more sincerity 



370 MY GENERATION 

and freedom of thought, or by a larger vision of Christian 
faith. The return trip was in marked contrast with the 
outward bound. We left San Francisco for Southern Cal- 
ifornia just in advance of the earthquake, having reached 
Santa Barbara when the news of it came to us. It became 
at once the great question for travelers how to secure 
transportation to the East. We made our exit, or as it 
seemed, our escape, by the new route then first opened 
(and soon after discontinued for a time) from Los Angeles 
through Salt Lake City. We had intended to return by 
the same route by which we came out, to recover the side 
trip to the Grand Canyon which we had missed, but for 
this we were in no mood had the way been open to us. 
There is no experience so depressing to a stranger as the 
sense that he is not only absolutely useless, but alto- 
gether in the way anywhere within the environment of a 
great local calamity. 

An event of civic as well as of religious import, in which 
I took part, was the celebration in 1897 of the fiftieth an- 
niversary of the founding of Plymouth Church, and the 
beginning of the work of Henry Ward Beecher in Brook- 
lyn. The celebration was distributed over several days 
with addresses by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Dr. Bradford of 
Montclair, New Jersey, and Rev. Dr. Charles A. Berry 
of England. The speakers of the closing evening were 
Dr. Gordon of Boston, Washington Gladden, and myself. 
These various addresses were published in book form 
under the title, "The New Puritanism." An interesting 
feature of the volume was the introduction by Rossiter W. 
Raymond, setting forth the origin of the church and the 
circumstances attending the call of Mr. Beecher. 

The semi-public duties of a college president begin in his 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 



371 



response to one or more of the many causes represented 
in public education. Some of these interested me, others 
did not; and those which did not interest me personally 
I found it difficult to interest myself in professionally. 
This had been my weakness in my former profession. I 
had little liking for the ecclesiastical and purely denom- 
inational side of the ministry, though I fully recognized 
their religious significance. Necessary attendance at coun- 
cils, conventions, and annual meetings was always a severe 
duty, seldom if ever an inspiration. The same feeling 
persisted in the transfer to the professional duties of 
an educator. The technical and conventional did not 
attract me. I took little interest in the science or art of 
pedagogy, though I saw the reason and necessity for such 
interest on the part of somebody in the profession. The 
matters which did interest me, most of them greatly, had 
to do with the educational values of the new subject- 
matter finding its way into the schools of every grade, the 
new constituency of the colleges coming out of the public 
schools, the function of the State in education, — these 
and like matters. I find upon reference to my notebooks 
or to published addresses, the following subjects of dis- 
cussion — "The Rights of the Period of Education," a 
plea not only for the requisite allowance of time for the 
schools but also for freedom to create a spirit, a senti- 
ment, an atmosphere of their own; "Arrested Education 
— How Recovered"; "The High School the School of 
the Community"; "The Educational Function of the 
Public Library"; "What has Patriotism the Right to 
demand of Education," an address before the Union 
League Club of Chicago on Washington's Birthday, 
1906; "Modern Education capable of Ideahsm," an ad- 



372 MY GENERATION 

dress at President King's Inauguration at Oberlin; "The 
Study of Contemporary Greatness," an address before the 
officers and cadets of the Naval Academy at AnnapoHs. 
This last address had for its object the endeavor to aid 
men entering the service of the coimtry, in forming their 
estimates of men in public life with whom they were to be 
concerned. The tests upon which I insisted as the constants 
of greatness always to be demanded, though not always 
to be expected in equal proportion in every really great 
man, were originality, authority, and beneficence. There 
are no equivalents for these qualities. Without these the 
claim to greatness is unreal if not untrue. 

Much of the time of my annual visit among the alumni, 
extending often for a month, was occupied in engagements 
at the schools or at meetings of teachers. Some of the 
schools of Cleveland, Chicago, Minneapolis, Omaha, Den- 
ver, St. Louis, became as well known to me as the schools 
of New England. The informality of address which these 
visits allowed was far more quickening to me, and I think 
quite as useful to the schools as the more formal addresses. 
It allowed and meant the adaptation of subject to time 
and place; sometimes it meant the introduction of a chal- 
lenging subject, which for its own nature might win a 
hearing. As I recall the visitation of so many public 
schools attending my alumni trips, I am reminded of my 
indebtedness to Mr. H. H. Hilton, of Chicago, toward 
the close of my official relation to the College a trustee, 
whose wide acquaintance with the schools and schoolmen 
of the Middle West enabled me to gain an increasing 
understanding of the local situation. 

Naturally the most intimate of the public relations into 
which I came as the President of Dartmouth was with the 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 373 

State of New Hampshire. State and College had passed 
through singular vicissitudes in their relation to one an- 
other. The royal charter which gave to the College its 
right and privileges in the Province of New Hampshire 
could not determine its future political environment. The 
relations between Governor John Wentworth and Presi- 
dent Wlieelock were most intimate, but they were per- 
sonal or oflScial, in no sense political. Each was concerned 
for the interests entrusted to him and in the furtherance 
of their respective interests they acted in hearty and 
complete accord. With the outbreak of the Revolution 
and the change from the provincial to the colonial govern- 
ment, the College instantly and vehemently threw in its 
lot with the cause of liberty. It was a costly step, but taken 
without fear or hesitation. The action of the College was 
not, it could not have been, more patriotic than that of the 
State; but by the force of circumstances, that is, accord- 
ing to the political views of its constituency, it was more 
democratic than the State. The migration from Connecti- 
cut, which preceded and followed Dr. Wheelock and his 
School up the River, was imbued with the political creed 
of Hooker, the founder of the Connecticut Colony, of 
which the prime article was the integrity of the town as 
the elementary political unit. It was the basis of poHtical 
representation. The colonial state, with its seat of govern- 
ment at Exeter or in some one of the centers of population 
in the eastern or southern parts, based its authority on 
numerical representation, ignoring the right of represen- 
tation by towns. Instantly the towns along the Connecticut 
were in revolt, and looked to the college town of Hanover 
for leadership. The college community was not loath to 
assume it, and for six years carried on the contest, now by 



374 



MY GENERATION 



seeking to organize the State of New Connecticut out of 
the towns on either side of the river (the New Hampshire 
Grant claiming to include all territory to the border of 
New York), and now by joining with the settlers on the 
Grant between the river and New York in their effort to 
organize the State of Vermont. The latter project pro- 
ceeded so far, that at one time the College put itself under 
the protection of the newly organized State prior to its 
admission to the Union, Until very recently, there was a 
small brick church standing in the town of Norwich at the 
head of the northern end of the main street, in which the 
legislature of the State of Vermont held its session in 1785, 
at which time it voted a tract of land to be incorporated 
into the township of Wheelock, "one moiety of the said 
premises" to be used for the benefit of Moor's Charity 
School under President Wheelock or his successors, and 
the other for the use of Dartmouth College under the 
control of the trustees or their successors. 

It was in every way to the advantage of the College 
that the attempt to organize the State of New Connecticut 
out of the towns on the east and west banks of the river 
failed. The College would have been greatly circumscribed 
by the success of the attempt, and a political character 
would have been given to its reputation to the detri- 
ment of its academic standing. It was better politically 
that the States of New Hampshire and Vermont should 
have their present alignment. The struggle, however, left 
its impress upon each State — upon Vermont in its sys- 
tem of representation based upon the town as the unit, 
and upon New Hampshire by making the town the 
irreducible unit, at the price of maintaining the largest 
legislative body in the country. 




THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 375 

The ^ory of this academic experiment in statecraft is 
one of the most interesting, and in many ways instructive, 
episodes in the poHtical history of New England. Strictly 
speaking, it was no more academic than legal, or in general 
political. The recognized leaders — Judge Woodward and 
Judge Payne, Colonel Olcott and Joseph Marsh — were 
all men of affairs, as were their associates in the towns up 
and down the river. President Wheelock denied active 
participation in the movement, but there is little doubt 
about his influence, and his son John, then in the twenties, 
was accorded a place among the practical workers. The 
revolt was the assertion of the Connecticut political idea 
by men bred in that political school. Nevertheless, it was 
perhaps fittingly characterized as the college party, as 
having its center at Hanover, the college precinct, trans- 
formed for the time into the township of Dresden, in 
the expectation of becoming the capital of the new State, 
while the various publications in support of the movement 
emanated from that center. In any event, the popular 
verdict during the struggle and after traced its origin and 
development to the agency of the College. The practical 
politicians were very outspoken in this charge. Ethan Allen, 
of the "Bennington" or Western Vermont party, writing 
to the representatives of the "Exeter" or Eastern New 
Hampshire party with whom he had joined hands, char- 
acterized the college party as "a Petulent, Pettefoging, 
Scribbling sort of Gentry that will keep any government 
in hot water till they are thoroughly brought under by 
the exertions of authority." The answer of the Exeter 
party, in control of the convention to form a new constitu- 
tion for the State of New Hampshire, was the insertion of 
the clause that "no president, professor, or instructor in 



376 MY GENERATION 

any college should have a seat in either House of the Legis- 
lature or in the Council." This clause remained in force 
for ten yeai's. Meanwhile and for some time longer, it 
represented the oflScial and popular political feeling toward 
the College. It was twenty years after the retirement of 
Governor Wentworth (1775) before his seat as Trustee 
ex-officio on the Board of Trustees was occupied by any 
Governor, or as then styled, President of the State. In 1795 
Governor John Taylor Gilman of Exeter took his seat, 
when, says Chase in his History of the College, "the full 
restoration of official relations of the State to the College 
were emphasized by the meeting in Hanover of the Legis- 
lature and the inauguration of Governor Gilman in the 
College Chapel." 

This happier state of affairs continued nearly twenty 
years, till the opening of the great controversy over the 
charter of the College, which culminated in the appeal to 
the Supreme Court of the United States. The decision in 
the case was rendered in 1819, fifty years after the found- 
ing of the College and its location within the Province of 
New Hampshire. These fifty years, as has been seen, were 
to a far larger degree years of contention than of cooper- 
ation or even of agreement. The marvel is that after such 
an experience in the formative stage of their existence, 
State and College should have accepted the final result so 
unreservedly, and continued their relation on the basis of 
comity and respect. When I came to the presidency of the 
College in 1893, this relation had been unbroken for three 
quarters of a century. If there was at the time lack of 
enthusiasm for the College on the part of the State, it was 
due more than all else to a lack of enthusiasm of the State 
for itself. The decade of the eighties was a somewhat de- 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 377 

pressed period in respect to state pride and enthusiasm. 
The decade of the war had shown a retrograde movement 
in population, and although there had been a recovery, the 
rate of growth had not reached the normal standard of the 
country at large. It was the period when public attention 
was called to the decline of rural New England. An aban- 
doned farm in the remote regions accessible to summer 
tourists, was much more sensitively in evidence than the 
newly constructed mills that hned the highways of travel. 
The readjustment in the industries of the State had not 
gone far enough to reassure the people at large. And 
to add to the confusion, the politics of the State had been 
demoralized and embittered by a protracted railroad war. 
Returning to the State at this juncture, I felt that whatever 
influence I might have from my position should be exer- 
cised for the advancement of the State as well as for the 
College. I declared publicly that "if I had not beheved in 
the future of New Hampshire, I should not have accepted 
the presidency of Dartmouth." The first address which I 
gave on a state occasion, that of the dedication of the 
State Library Building (January 8, 1895), was on the "Re- 
newal of Civic Pride in the Commonwealth" — a revival as 
essential as that which had followed the restoration of the 
nation, or that which was beginning to be manifest in the 
change of public feeling toward the municipality. An oc- 
casion which called for more thorough and comprehensive 
investigation into the actual condition of the State was 
afforded by an invitation to address an association made 
up of members of the present and past legislatures, June 
30, 1896. The subject of the address was "New Hampshire 
during the Period of Industrial Reconstruction." My 
previous economic studies had given me a degree of 



378 MY GENERATION 

preparation for the treatment of this subject, and I found 
myself greatly interested in the application of economic 
principles to the problems which it involved. The result 
was a hearty and appreciative response not only from those 
to whom the address was especially directed, but from 
many who read it as it was widely circulated through the 
State. A most cheering word came to me directly from 
Attorney-General A. E. Pillsbury of Massachusetts (a son 
of New Hampshire) : "I doubt if even you appreciate what 
you have done for the State of New Hampshire and for 
Dartmouth College. Your address is the utterance of this 
generation concerning the State." At the request of Mr. 
Pillsbury, the address was repeated in substance before 
the Sons of New Hampshire in Boston. 

The somewhat unusual occasions about this time for the 
interchange of courtesies between College and State w^ere 
helpful to the maintenance of the quickened relations 
between them — on the part of the College, occasions like 
the Webster Centennial, and the Banquet to the Earl of 
Dartmouth following the Laying of the Corner Stone of 
the New Dartmouth Hall, and on the part of the State, 
occasions like the Presentation of Memorial Tablets by 
the State to the U.S.S. Kearsarge and the U.S.S. Alabama 
at Portsmouth, September 18, 1900. This particular occa- 
sion was so full of general as well as local interest that I 
refer to it in considerable detail. At its session in 1899, the 
Legislature of New Hampshire passed the following reso- 
lution relative to the new battleship to be known as the 
Kearsarge: "Whereas one of the nation's new battleships 
under construction by the Government, and now nearing 
completion, has received the name Kearsarge, Resolved, 
that in behalf of the people of New Hampshire, the Gov- 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 379 

ernor be asked to appoint a committee of citizens of the 
State to procure and present for the use of the Kearsarge 
a worthy testimonial, which shall bear with it the affec- 
tionate love of the people of New Hampshire for this noble 
ship which, because of the name it bears, must become of 
all the battleships New Hampshire's special pride." 

The Committee appointed by the Governor to carry out 
the object specified in the resolution added of its own 
motion the recognition of the battleship Alabama, then 
nearly completed, as the ship always to be associated with 
the Kearsarge in the retrospect of the war: 

It was a foregone conclusion that the Kearsarge should be 
honored by a gift which should worthily reflect New Hamp- 
shire pride and New Hampshire sentiment. The Commission 
could have stopped here, and procured merely a worthy gift 
for New Hampshire's battleship. But it felt that if only this 
were done New Hampshire would have lost a unique opportunity 
to perform a graceful act, an act which should have a national 
as well as a local significance. The Commission therefore asks 
the people of New Hampshire to make a presentation to the 
Kearsarge and to the Alabama. When the two great battleships, 
Kearsarge and Alabama, are about to enter the service of a 
united nation, can New Hampshire do a more worthy act than 
add to the glory which surrounds the name Kearsarge by making 
it a pledge between New Hampshire and Alabama that they 
and these two noble ships are united for the defense and welfare 
of a common country .^^ The proposed gift to the Kearsarge will 
be a large bronze bas-relief, to be placed on the forward turret 
between the two 13-inch guns. The gift for the Alabama will 
probably be a large design in bronze appropriately inscribed, to 
be placed on one of the turrets. Dr. Tucker of Dartmouth Col- 
lege has been asked by his colleagues on the Commission to 
prepare the inscription. 

In accordance with the above request the following in- 
scription was prepared for the U.S.S. Kearsarge. It was 



38o MY GENERATION 

placed upon a large bronze bas-relief below the two figures 
with clasped hands, representing the reunited North and 
South. 

From the State of New Hampshire to the 

U.S.S. Kearsarge 

To Maintain Justice Honor Freedom 

In the Service of a Reunited People 

The Memorial to the U.S.S. Alabama took the form of a 
large bronze tablet carrying the following inscription : 

The State of New Hampshire to the 

U.S.S. Alabama 

This Tablet, Companion to that on the 

U.S.S. Kearsarge, Placed Here by Courtesy 

of the State of Alabama Perpetuates in 

Enduring Peace Names Once Joined 

in Historic Combat 

At the banquet which closed the day of public presenta- 
tion, an incident of peculiar significance was introduced. 
Addresses had been made by the presiding oflScer, General 
Streeter, by Governors Rollins of New Hampshire and 
Johnston of Alabama, by Secretary Long of the Navy, by 
Secretary Gage of the Treasury, and by Admiral Far- 
quhar. Commanding OflBcer of the North Atlantic Squad- 
ron, when Governor Rollins arose and presented to Gover- 
nor Johnston two battle-flags once borne by Alabama regi- 
ments, but since the war in possession of the State of New 
Hampshire. This unexpected incident greatly stirred the 
guests at the banquet. It had been arranged that as Presi- 
dent of Dartmouth I should make the concluding speech 
of the evening, in response to the toast — "The United 
States." The hour was so late when the incident occurred 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 381 

that the reporters had left, and no report of the speeches 
attending it was given in the daily papers. I give the 
speech as it was written out later from brief notes, at the 
special request of Governor Rollins: 

Mr. Toastmaster, Governor Rollins and Governor Johnston — 

The heart of the nation has been waiting for such an act as 
that which we have just witnessed, embodying as it does so 
completely the spirit of this memorable day. North and South 
alike have been ready to break through the restraints and re- 
serves which naturally follow upon a civil war, and to reassert 
that feeling which is deeper than the feelings engendered by 
strife. The time has now come, we cannot be mistaken in be- 
lieving, to break the silence of these past years, generous and 
healing though it has been — but not by words. Words cannot 
restore what deeds have taken away. It is the office of the fit 
and sincere act to bring back the old friendship. I count it the 
honorable and timely distinction of the states of New Hamp- 
shire and Alabama, a distinction which will certainly have its 
place in history, that they are able to lead the way in this really 
significant interchange of sentiment. Other states have been 
more conspicuously related to one another through their earlier 
past, as notably Massachusetts and Virginia. But the fortune of 
the recent war, shall I not say the comradeship of one of its 
greatest events, has given us our opportunity, and we have 
dared to take it. We have dared to call up the most thrilling, 
perhaps the most separating incident of the war; we have dared 
to bring together names which had thrust men farthest apart; 
we have dared to evoke the memory of a fight fierce and bitter 
unto death; and having done this what remains to be ignored, 
or evaded, or held back? The restoration of these flags is not a 
charity, it is not even a courtesy. These flags go back to you, 
men of Alabama, by the logic of the situation, and with them 
go our hearts. 

I am asked to speak a brief closing word, after this act, to the 
toast — "The United States" — the most significant name 
among the nations, for it is a name which embodies a principle 



382 MY GENERATION 

and a history, a name which has thus far been justified and 
maintained only through perpetual sacrifice. The sentiment of 
unity, I do not say the principle but the sentiment of unity, is 
the soul of our national life. We cannot exist as a nation without 
a passion for unity, second only if at all, to the passion for lib- 
erty. No nation of modern times has had an inner life like our 
own. Few nations have had any inner life compared with the 
outer life of conquest and empire. But from the very beginning 
the thought of the people of this country has been turned in- 
ward, and the point of solicitude, concession, and at last struggle, 
has been unity. At first it was unity simply as a means to an 
end, the end being freedom as expressed in independence, but 
sometimes it seemed as hard to ensure the means as to reach 
the end. The struggle leading up to the Revolution, and through 
it, was the struggle for unity quite as much as for liberty. I 
marvel more and more at the enduring patience, the constant 
forbearance, the unfailing sacrifices which wrought their sure 
result in our national independence. Liberty was won we say 
at Bunker Hill, at Trenton, at Yorktown: yes, but more clearly 
in the silent determination of consenting hearts, in the generous 
concessions of statesmen and soldiers, in the mutual support of 
the colonies, in the unbroken will of a people set on freedom. 
Liberty was won when Washington stood under the Cambridge 
Elm and without dissent took command of the meagre but 
united band of patriots from North and South. Victory rested 
in that calm, steadfast, compelling nature. For seven years it 
waited, but it was as sure as was his life, the central and com- 
manding figure among men who knew no fear, who would not 
yield to dissensions, who would be one to the end. 

And yet when the immediate end came, and the thirteen strug- 
gling colonies became the United States of America, there began 
to be felt at once that great concern as to how the Union might 
be saved. It was not an unwarranted concern. It affected every 
interest of the nation. There was not a debate in Congress, how- 
ever remote the subject might be — the tariff, acquisition of 
territory, education — which was not sensitive to the danger 
which threatened the Union. Before a generation had passed 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 383 

the situation became tense. Then concession followed concession; 
compromise followed compromise. The effort to preserve the 
Union became pathetic. As the years went on, pathos deepened 
into tragedy. Public careers, the careers of many of our greatest 
statesmen, were sacrificed. Personal friendships were sundered. 
Gradually we became to outward appearance thoroughly section- 
alized. At last the national tragedy came upon us. A generation 
went down into suffering and sorrow. To what end? For free- 
dom? Yes, again for freedom, and in many ways through a nobler 
and more unselfish struggle than the first. I think that none of 
us would deny that the Civil War marvelously enlarged the idea 
of liberty, and refined its quality. But back in all of our hearts 
was the conviction that the nation must live. We could not 
believe that it was in the plan of God, we would not believe that 
it was really in the heart of man, that the nation should die, 
that the nation should cease to be the United States. The in- 
eradicable, the indestructible passion for unity was in all 
whether we fought for it or against it. 

And now that the struggle to gain the Union and to save it 
is over, who does not rejoice in the established integrity of the 
nation? Who does not feel the new sense of power, the new sense 
of security, the new sense of freedom? " We the people" are more 
than ever "we the States." We are no longer afraid to claim or 
to admit our mutual rights. Every State born out of the original 
compact, every State created out of acquired territory, every 
State now in the making, knows that it has the assurance of its 
safety and the promise of its greatness in the fact that it is an in- 
tegral part of the United States. We may not minimize the perils 
which beset the future of the nation. No nation can guarantee 
its own future. But of the vital forces which are to conserve our 
national life we have put the two greatest to the proof. We have 
the right to believe that these will abide in their saving strength. 
When the prospect was far otherwise than it is to-day, when the 
perils to the Union were more evident than its safety, one man 
among us, native to these hills, who walked the streets of the city 
where we are met, uttered in the national Congress the memor- 
able word of hope. Surely we cannot doubt the perpetuity of a 



384 MY GENERATION 

nation which we have seen founded and refounded in " liberty 
and union." We of all men can least deny ourselves the hope 
that " liberty and union," which are ours by the rights of in- 
heritance and by the rights of sacrifice, will abide with us accord- 
ing to the prophetic vision, " one and inseparable." 

Of a very different character was the call which came 
later to join with certain other citizens in a strenuous en- 
deavor to relieve the State from a humiliating condition, 
in which it had been placed unwittingly through an un- 
considered action of the Legislature of 1905-06. In the 
closing days of its session a bill was introduced and rapidly 
passed by both houses chartering the New England Breed- 
ers' Club, for the avowed purpose "of raising, importing, 
and improving the breed of horses and other domestic 
animals in the State of New Hampshire." This action was 
taken on March 10, 1905. It was some months before 
the deception practiced in the introduction and putting 
through of the bill granting the charter was brought out, 
and then more in the way of suspicion and questioning 
than of proven imposition. It seemed impossible that a 
great gambling institution could have been set up in the 
State under the simple guise of a club chartered to improve 
the stock farms of New Hampshire, that reputable men 
should have lent their influence in its favor as a benefit to 
the State, and that the Legislature should have opened 
the doors of the State to its entrance, if it was not what it 
purported to be. This deception was supported by the al- 
most superfluous clause of the bill providing against gam- 
bling or betting on the races, which were to be a part of 
the process of improving the breed of horses. The immedi- 
ate success of the manipulators of the movement both 
without and within the State was a tribute to their evil 
skill in such matters. 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 385 

The Reverend Thomas Chalmers of Manchester was 
the first man to call public attention to the public danger. 
In an address before a religious convention held at Con- 
cord on the 26th of October he exposed the scheme, as it 
appeared to him, of foisting a great gambling concern in 
perpetuity upon the State, and asked that a committee be 
appointed for further investigation. The Convention re- 
sponded promptly to his appeal, by nominating a com- 
mittee entrusted with the business of appointing in its 
name a committee of representative citizens to carry out 
the will of the Convention. This Committee was secured, 
and was known as "The Committee of Twelve" appointed 
"to investigate the facts relating to the organization, 
methods and purposes of the so-called New England Breed- 
ers' Club," with the further instruction "to take such 
measures to arouse the moral forces of the State as the 
facts shall warrant." This Committee when secured or- 
ganized by choosing Dr. Chalmers as Chairman, and pro- 
ceeding at once to its business. There were two difficulties 
to be overcome before it could act freely and effectively. 
One was the danger of becoming complicated with external 
reform organizations desirous of exploiting in a general 
way the New Hampshire situation. To those who knew the 
independent spirit of the State, as later reformers from 
without or not suflSciently in the State had occasion to 
test it, it appeared necessary that the attempted reform 
should be made a state affair; that it should be made ap- 
parent that the State was capable of dealing in its own 
way with impostors when once discovered. The other diffi- 
culty was for the Committee to limit itself strictly to its 
instructions. It was an inviting field of inquiry to enter 
upon, lying at its very doors — How did the New England 



386 MY GENERATION 

Breeders' Club get its charter; who was to blame; what 
were the methods employed? — but that was not the 
business of this Committee. With some reluctance on the 
part of a few of the Committee, but by an admirable self- 
restraint on the part of those who would have liked to enter 
into the investigation suggested, the whole Committee 
gave itself up to the one object of making perfectly clear 
to the public just what the New England Breeders' Club 
was, and upon the basis of ascertained facts to take such 
measures as might lead as quickly as possible to ridding 
the State of the danger of its presence. A sub-committee 
was appointed to raise an investigating fund, and a sub- 
committee consisting of Edward C. Niles, Esq. of Con- 
cord, and myself, to carry out the investigation and to 
present the case when prepared to the Governor and Coun- 
cil. The report of this sub-committee, made in behalf of 
the Committee at large, took up in careful detail the proofs 
of the deception involved in the charter of the New Eng- 
land Breeders' Club, by showing the precise results of the 
Percy-Gray Bill in New York, of which the bill authorizing 
the Breeders' Club was practically a duplicate, especially 
as seen in the utterly untrustworthy character of the 
clauses forbidding betting and gambling, and by adduc- 
ing carefully collated testimony, to show the actual work- 
ing of race-tracks in various States run by the Association 
behind the Breeders' Club. It then discussed the ques- 
tion of the sufficiency of the laws of New Hampshire on 
betting and gambling to deal with the Club if it were 
allowed to operate in the State. The report closed with 
the direct petition to the Governor and Council: 

Under the circumstances, as the only means of clearing up the 
situation, we respectfully ask that you exercise your constitu- 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 387 

tional right of requesting the Supreme Court of this State to 
submit to you their opinion upon the important points of law in 
question, particularly as to the adequacy of our existing laws to 
suppress the varied forms of race-track betting, the effect of the 
provisions of the charter of the New England Breeders' Club 
exempting that organization from the operation of those laws, 
the constitutionality of those provisions, the power of the Legis- 
lature to amend or repeal that charter, and any other matters 
regarding which you feel that their advice would be of value to 
you. With that information, certainty will take the place of 
conjecture, and you will be able intelligently and with confidence 
to determine your duty in the premises. 

The manifest alternative to the denial of this petition, 
or to such an opinion from the Supreme Court as would 
leave the essential question still in doubt, would have been 
the demand for the recall of the Legislature to repeal the 
charter and to enact sufficient laws for the protection of 
the State against all like attempts to introduce race -track 
gambling or betting. There was great reluctance to con- 
sider the reconvening of the Legislature. It involved many 
unpleasant liabilities. Moreover, it was an expensive pro- 
cedure. An opinion from the court was in every way most 
desirable, if a clear, decisive, and sufficiently drastic opin- 
ion could be secured. The Governor and Council took im- 
mediate action requiring the opinion of the court, and the 
opinion, when rendered, met every condition necessary to 
give security to the State against any possible results of 
the operation of the Salem race-track. The track was al- 
ready in process of construction at an immense cost. The 
site of the track at a border town on the Massachusetts 
line had been chosen for easy access from Boston and the 
cities of eastern Massachusetts, as well as from the manu- 
facturing cities of the Merrimack valley. 



388 MY GENERATION 

While the proceedings for the protection of the State 
were going on, and after the announcement of the opinion 
of the court, the New England Breeders' Club maintained 
a supercilious and indifferent attitude, after the New York 
habit. The race-track was completed and the opening of 
the spring season was announced. On the first day books 
were opened and bets made as if nothing had been done. 
On the second day and thereafter all gambling ceased 
through the interference of the state authorities. The sea- 
son went on without the usual accompaniment, but it was 
an empty farce. The fall season was opened, and carried on 
under like conditions and with like results. Then the enter- 
prise was abandoned at an immense financial loss. The 
Salem race-track was as desolate as an abandoned farm. 
Through the aroused moral sentiment of the State, the 
prompt and adequate decision of the Supreme Court, the 
vigorous and determined action of the Governor, the New 
York experiment of ignoring the moral sentiment of a 
State and defying its authority in the interest of race- 
track gambling had proved a monumental failure in New 
Hampshire.^ 

This active participation on my part in a matter of civic 
reform so closely bordering on politics, led some persons to 
assume that it meant a willingness to go further, and my 
name began to be mentioned in connection with the gov- 
ernorship. The first time, however, the suggestion came 

1 For further details see the Petition of the Sub-Committee of the Committee of 
Twelve to the Governor and Council of the State of New Hampshire, — a pamphlet 
of thirty-two pages; the opinion of the Supreme Court in answer to the order of 
the Governor for a ruling in the case, reported in the daily papers of the State 
under date of March 14, 1906; also an address at a mass meeting of the citizens 
of Manchester, January 14, 1906, on tue Repeal of the Charter of the New Eng- 
land Breeders' Club, reported in the papers of the next day, published in " Public- 
Mindedness," pp. 177-88. 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 389 

out into any publicity I quickly suppressed it. I had al- 
ready defined my position in regard to politics, as may be 
seen from the following clipping, taken from a Boston paper 
discussing the make-up of the delegation from New Hamp- 
shire to the National Republican Convention in 1900 at 
Philadelphia: 

Concord, N.H., Mar, 26. — The name of Pres. Tucker of 
Dartmouth has been prominently mentioned in connection with 
the selection of delegates at large from this state to the republi- 
can national convention in Philadelphia. 

Dr. Tucker puts a quietus on the movement in this letter to 
one of his trustees, who is also a prominent member of the repub- 
lican party in New Hampshire: 

"I have no knowledge whatever of the circumstances or rea- 
sons which led to the use of my name in connection with the 
republican national convention. But if you are in a way to say 
anything to those concerned in it, I think that you must make 
it clear that I am not in politics. 

"One must be in politics in a responsible or an irresponsible 
way. For the latter kind of political dabbling, I have no respect 
whatever. And for responsible politics I have no time apart from 
the ordinary duties of a citizen. 

"I remember having once said to you that I believed thor- 
oughly in practical politics as an open field to-day for men of 
principle and capacity. I say this to college men and urge them 
to consider it in their ambitions. 

"But I think that the plain condition of entering politics in 
any public way is that a man must be able to know all that is 
going on, so that he may know what to say, where to strike, and 
where not to strike. Unless a man has such knowledge as this 
his influence counts for nothing. 

"Certainly I have no time for such a venture. The interests of 
the College are not only first, but for all practical uses prohibi- 
tive so far as other interests of a public nature are concerned, 
which require discrimination and public statement. 



390 MY GENERATION 

"I think that this makes my position so clear that it is not 
necessary for me to mention any incidental matters in detail. 
When one passes into secondary reasons, there may be those for 
or against any such action which might be considered, but it is 
not necessary to take them up. 

"I will thank you very much, if you are in a way to do so, to 
see that my name does not come before the convention, and if 
the suggestion is really under way, that my name is withdrawn." 

Perhaps this letter to Mr. Streeter needs to be supple- 
mented by my views on politics as a profession, according 
to the reference in the letter to my advice to college men. 
I quote from a Rollins Chapel talk on the "Distribution of 
Personal Power " : ^ 

Have we gone to the root of the matter in placing our reliance 
upon reform and in training reformers? Why not recognize poli- 
tics as a business, as a profession? Why not train men to do the 
business right in the first instance? Why not start in with the 
idea of making a good politician instead of a reformer? Why al- 
low so noble a science as politics to be broken up and to fall in 
pieces between the "statesman" and the "politician"? If the 
real power, delegated power, lies in party, then put your man, 
your whole man, in the seat of power. If that is the seat of 
authority, make it a place, if not the place of honor. But, you 
say to me, do you mean just this? Would you advise us to go 
into practical politics as you would advise us to go into business 
or the professions? That is just what I want to say. I can see no 
more honorable or inviting opportunity for a firm and patient 
ambition than municipal, or under certain conditions, national 
politics. The apprenticeship is long. Temptations are not lacking. 
But the way is open. Difficulties are not insurmountable. If a 
good man gives the same attention to business that a bad man 
gives, he is more likely to succeed. The only drawback to a noble 
success in American politics is the unwillingness of the people to 
acknowledge and rightly estimate the fact, that politics repre- 
1 Personal Power, pp. 94-96. 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 391 

sents delegated power, that it is too large a thing to be possessed 
through the inroads of personal enthusiasm. Politics is a territory 
to be occupied, where men may make their habitation, and live 
honestly, and be held in honor by their fellow men. The scholar 
may go into politics, if he will, but let him go there to gain a 
residence. Let him go to learn as well as to teach. Let him keep 
his faith in men, but let him be patient with them. Let him ac- 
cept honor and rejoice in it, but let him rejoice most in the serv- 
ice he can render. Let him stand to his task, as men stand to 
whom are intrusted the honor and safety of the nation, that 
other men may do their work securely and in peace. 

But while emphasizing, as I always did, the practicabil- 
ity of politics as a profession having for its essential end 
the public good, I tried to make it clear that there was a 
vast unoccupied field of public service within the limits 
of the common citizenship. In the preface to "Public- 
Mindedness," which had for its sub- title, "An Aspect of 
Citizenship considered in Various Addresses given while 
President of Dartmouth College," I set forth the present 
lack of vision as well as of duty in regard to citizen- 
ship. The accepted definition of a citizen is that of "a per- 
son who enjoys the privileges of a city or a state." Citizen- 
ship is the "status" of a person enjoying these privileges. 
There is as yet no sufficient recognition, in idea or in fact, 
of the quality of public-mindedness as inherent in citizen- 
ship. If we wish to emphasize this quality we are still 
obliged to speak of "good" citizenship. The title of the 
present book is a reminder of this deficiency. It implies that 
the discrimination may fairly be made between citizens 
who use their citizenship to guarantee their private inter- 
ests, and citizens who also use their citizenship with su- 
preme regard to the public good. The title of the first ad- 
dress reproduced in the book, originally given in Carnegie 



392 MY GENERATION 

Hall, November 17, 1905, was "Good Citizenship depend- 
ent upon Great Citizens"; the title of the second, origi- 
nally given in Tremont Temple, May 25, 1906, "The 
Sacredness of Citizenship." 

The public relations of a college president may become 
to him a kind of avocation. Literally, an avocation is a 
calling away for a time from one's vocation — not a neg- 
lect of it or an interference with it, for then it would defeat 
its own end as a diversion or relief. Travel becomes such 
an avocation even when undertaken primarily, as it usu- 
ally is, on oflBcial or semi-oflBcial business. It changes most 
quickly the routine, the environment, the atmosphere of 
the daily work. Incidentally, it offers special facihties for 
uninterrupted work. The parlor car on a short trip or a 
sleeper on some long journey is a better literary workshop 
than the office. I recall with delight the compartment of a 
corridor car on the Santa Fe road which gave me the pro- 
tection of four days of uninterrupted writing from Chicago 
to San Francisco. But the avocation of travel offers its 
chief relief in the change it brings about so naturally from 
the executive to the social side of the profession. I do not 
refer to formal social functions which may be very solemn 
and very tedious, but to those more personal associations 
through which one widens his knowledge of men of his own 
and of other callings, and enters more freely into the com- 
radeship to which this larger acquaintance with men and 
their varied interests opens the way. I count intelligent 
and well-directed travel a vocational and an avocational 
asset of a college president. Whatever value it may rep- 
resent to him personally may usually be credited in still 
larger degree to the college. 

I think that I should extend this valuation of travel be- 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 393 

yond the range of the constituency of the college and even 
beyond the country. It almost goes without saying that a 
college president ought to know the local sources from 
which the college draws its men, and that he ought to 
know as far as possible those parts of the country into 
which the college pours its alumni. Such knowledge on his 
part is the only safeguard against provincialism, the un- 
pardonable sin in a college president in so far as he as- 
sumes to be a man of afiFairs. As a scholar the escape from 
provincialism is far easier. Indeed, it is diflScult to under- 
stand how a scholar, if he be sincere and courageous, can 
fall into this danger. The gates of knowledge all swing out- 
ward. But even within the range of the broadest scholar- 
ship there is need of an avocation which may help to make 
the vocation more real, to give it contact with things most 
human, to put it into the currents of the world. Of course 
this effect can be realized only through the experiences 
of the man himself, and of these experiences one is the re- 
sult, as I have been urging, of well-directed and intelligent 
travel. As I am writing these lines, the news has just come 
of the surrender of Constantinople to the Allies. Ever since 
the War has assumed its world proportions, I have felt that 
wherever the military decision might be made, the political 
decision must be made there, where alone the whole world 
was within reach. Many students of history and of current 
events have expressed this view. Such had been my own 
view from the limited study I had been able to give to the 
problems of the near East. But I date my impression of 
the meaning of the possession of Constantinople in the 
struggle for empire or in the struggle for international 
peace, to the sensation new, strange, and lasting which 
came upon me as I crossed for the first time the Galata 



394 MY GENERATION 

Bridge — here, I said to myself, is the meeting-place of the 
races, here it is still East and West. 

VII 

Tivo Years of Crippled Leadership 

In his more than Emersonian essay on "Work and Play," 
Horace Bushnell develops the theory that play is not the 
antithesis of work, and is therefore not to be defined in 
terms of sport, or recreation, or rest, but that it is rather 
the normal expression of work at its best, a state in which 
one reaches the highest degree of enjoyment. "In short," 
he says, " we are to conceive that the highest and complete 
state of man, that which his nature endeavors after and 
in which only it fulfills its sublime instinct, is the state of 
play." Dr. Bushnell's philosophy of work and play touches 
the vexed question of the relief of physical and mental 
strain. One theory finds the necessary and apparently 
sufficient relief in the reduction of the hours of labor — 
the theory of industrialism. To what extent this relief, 
when it shall be fully brought about in the manual occu- 
pations, will prove to be satisfying, must depend on the 
use of the leisure thus secured. For the theory leaves 
out of account the relief which lies in one's interest in his 
work. It makes work altogether work with no play in it. 
All the play element in life must be found outside and 
apart from work. The other theory emphasizes in different 
ways the Bushnell conception of "work and play." It is 
the only possible theory which can be applied to profes- 
sional life, and to those callings in which the wear and 
tear lies in the constant pressure of responsibility. The 
principle of an eight-hour day has no application to the 
professions except in a superficial way to teaching. In the 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 395 

professions a man must be a law unto himself in his use of 
time, the governing factor being his temperament or the 
specific nature of his work, like that of the doctor. The 
great distinction as it now exists under the reign of indus- 
trialism between the manual laborer and the professional 
worker is the lack of interest, certainly of relieving interest 
in his work on the part of the former, and the excess of 
interest on the part of the latter, an excess which may de- 
feat its own end. In his case the play of the work may 
simply intensify it, passing altogether beyond the bounds 
of relief. 

I confess to having adopted Dr. Bushnell's theory of the 
play element in work quite unconsciously, but when I 
began to consider in a practical way the question of work 
and rest, I found that the theory had become a governing 
idea. I had occasion at times to discuss the matter with 
our family physician. Dr. William T. Smith, Dean of the 
Medical School, who took exception to my theory and 
still more to my practices. Dr. Smith was a man of great 
sanity of judgment, which at this particular point had been 
confirmed by his own experience. His early professional 
life had been arrested by a nervous disability from which 
he had slowly recovered. It is but fair to him to say that 
he gave me frequent cautions, and endeavored to moder- 
ate my working pace, but my natural temperament and 
the exigencies of the day often led me to override his ad- 
vice. I counted also very much upon my fondness for out- 
of-door life and so long as possible upon out-of-door sport. 
When tennis became too violent an exercise, I tried golf, 
but golf was too manifestly an old man's game when ap- 
proached from age, and therefore no game at all — only a 
certain "mode of motion," or at best a gamble with nature. 



396 MY GENERATION 

I did not, however, neglect the ordinary reliefs of the sum- 
mer vacation, especially after the work of reconstruction 
was well under way. In the summer of 1902 I bought a 
cottage on the river at York Harbor. This was next below 
the old Sayward house, the original home of Judge Say- 
ward, Mrs. Tucker's great-great-grandfather. This an- 
cestral interest, taken in connection with the beauty of the 
spot, had already led Mrs. Tucker's sisters to turn to York 
Harbor for their summer home — Mrs. George I. Rock- 
wood and Mrs. Leonard Wheeler of Worcester, and Miss 
Cheever of Smith College. The early associations of the 
family with colonial history added greatly to the interest 
of our summer sojourns. The deciphering of Judge Say- 
ward's diary, extending over thirty years and covering the 
whole period of the Revolutionary War and the subse- 
quent constitutional era, gave us many entertaining eve- 
nings, owing to the personal idiosyncrasies of the author 
and the glimpses into the local history of the Revolution- 
ary times. Among the summer residents with whom we 
formed most pleasant acquaintance were Mrs. Pratt and 
Mrs. Bell, daughters of Rufus Choate, both remarkable 
conversationaHsts. With Mr. Howells as guest at their 
table, the flow of wit was never interrupted, but one sel- 
dom saw such unconscious recognition of mutual rights in 
conversation. 

I had reminders beyond the cautions of my physician 
of lessening powers of endurance, but I still relied upon 
my power of quick recuperation and kept at work, as it 
proved, too near the breaking-point. The break came sud- 
denly, anticipating by two years the time upon which I 
had calculated for a safe retirement. 

Near the close of the winter of 1907, upon my return 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 397 

from an extended and arduous trip among the alumni, I 
suffered from an undefined attack which developed into a 
severe and protracted illness. The unusual feature of this 
illness was my inability to respond to the ordinary treat- 
ment for a sickness of like symptoms. My power of recup- 
eration which till now had not failed me was at a low ebb. 
And yet it was not, according to the diagnosis of the at- 
tending physicians, nervous prostration. Their final diag- 
nosis traced the cause to a subtle but serious impairment 
of the heart, and their advice was to the effect that I must 
give over the hope of further active service of any essential 
value to the College. Of course this meant my resignation. 
As soon as I was able to understand the real significance 
of their decision I dictated the following confidential letter 
to the Trustees. The letter was sent to each individual 
member of the Board. I was anxious that the decision 
which I had had time to accept as a finality, should be given 
time to reach with them a like result before it should be 
given to the public. I also had the hope that they might be 
able to hold the matter in hand until they could at least 
make progress in the selection of my successor — possibly 
to announce his election in connection with my resignation : 

To the Trustees of Dartmouth College: 

For the last eighteen months I have been conscious of an un- 
defined physical disability which has given me at times serious 
embarrassment, especially in meeting public engagements. The 
sudden and somewhat protracted sickness through which I have 
been passing has revealed the cause, namely, an impairment of 
the heart. My physicians, Drs. Smith and Gile, advise me that I 
cannot expect to do further efficient executive work. I take the 
earliest opportunity to apprize you of their decision, and to 
place before you my resignation of the Presidency of the College. 
I have long recognized the fact that there are no gradations in 



398 MY GENERATION 

the work of a college president, in the way either of responsi- 
bility or of initiative. From the nature of the work there can be 
but one standard of efficiency. While therefore I anticipate by 
two or three years the natural time of my resignation, I do so 
with prompt and cheerful acquiescence in the law of all admin- 
istrative service, which makes no provision for crippled leader- 
ship. I now return to my books from which I virtually parted 
company when I assumed the absorbing duties of the presi- 
dency. If it shall seem to you to be a useful service, and in other 
respects wise, I shall be glad to retain an informal connection 
with the College through one or more courses of lectures, open 
to seniors, upon the general subject of the "Formation and Ex- 
pression of Public Opinion in a Democracy." 

I cannot put by these fourteen years of service, happy in their 
associations and inspiring in their purpose, without a word of 
grateful acknowledgment to those through whom the service 
has been made one of mutual obligation and delight — first to 
you for your steadfast and unwavering support, and then to 
the faculty, and to the students of successive classes, and to the 
alumni, each and all of whom have contributed everything in 
their power to the common end. With such cooperation no 
reasonable good to the College has seemed unattainable. The 
things which remain to be accomplished, very much larger than 
any which have been wrought, go over with equal incentive and 
hope to other hands. I count it a joy that, as I now relinquish the 
position which you asked me as a graduate of the College to take, 
I may resume my place in the united and enthusiastic fellowship 
of our graduates, to add one more supporting force to the work of 
my successor in the Presidency. 

I am in constant esteem 

Most sincerely yours 

W. J. Tucker | 

Naturally it required some little time for the Trustees 
to convince themselves of the finality which the letter 
of resignation carried on its face, but after full con- 
ference with Mr. Hopkins, the Secretary of the College, 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 399 

who had been conversant with the exact state of affairs 
from the beginning, and after advising personally with the 
physicians, they addressed themselves directly to the emer- 
gency. There was one man to whom their thoughts turned 
unanimously for the succession to the presidency, Professor 
Francis Brown, of Union Seminary, but as at a previous 
time, his obligations to the Seminary were found to be 
paramount. It was impossible to act with like unanimity 
in the choice of any other person among the alumni or 
among well-known educators; and meanwhile the press 
was becoming persistent in its search for reliable informa- 
tion in regard to my condition. To relieve the situation, 
the Trustees asked if it would not be possible to withdraw 
my resignation for a few months, with immediate leave of 
absence, and with provision for all necessary rehef from 
oflBcial duties should the chair remain unfilled at the open- 
ing of the next academic year. To this request I made the 
following response: 

To the Trustees of Dartmouth College : 

On the sixth of April, after the consultation of the doctors in 
regard to my present sickness, I communicated to you the re- 
sult of their decision, namely, that owing to an impairment of 
the heart, it would be impossible for me to continue in the full 
discharge of the duties of the presidency. It seemed to me so 
essential that the duties of the office should be maintained in 
full efficiency that I placed before you my resignation — "Al- 
though," as I then wrote, "I anticipated by two or three years 
the natural time of my resignation, I do so with prompt and 
cheerful acceptance of the law of all administrative service 
which makes no provision for crippled leadership." 

My letter was sent to you confidentially in the hope that you 
might be able to announce the election of my successor at the 
same time that you announced my resignation. Acting under 
the urgency of my desire, you endeavored to bring about the 



400 MY GENERATION 

result, but after earnest effort you found that this course was 
impracticable. You now ask me to withhold my letter, and to 
retain the general supervision of the College until such time as 
you may be able to give it over to my successor, without inter- 
ruption to its work or policy. I had proposed, as you will recall, 
to retain an informal connection with the College by the service 
which I might render through a lectureship, but if in your judg- 
ment I can render a better service for the time being by continu- 
ing in partial executive work, I accede to your request. I shall be 
obliged, however, to act under the following definite restrictions 
— absence for the remainder of this year; and for the next year, 
or such part of it as you may require, exemption from much of 
the daily routine and from public engagements. I need not as- 
sure you of my desire and purpose to cooperate with you in all 
of your immediate plans for the maintenance and advancement 
of the College. I see no reason whatever for any change in the 
policy which has heretofore governed your action, nor for the 
slightest abatement of your efforts for the strengthening, or 
enrichment, or increase of the inheritance which you have the 
honor to administer. 
I am 

In constant esteem and affection 

W. J. TUCKEB 
Hanover, N.H. 

May 11, 1907 

At the date of this letter I was still confined to my room, 
though I had entered upon the stage of convalescence. 
As soon as my strength allowed, Mrs. Tucker and I left 
our home for Nantucket, where provision had been made 
by friends for our reception quite in advance of the season. 
No choice of a resting-place could have been happier. 
There is a delightful sense of remoteness about Nantucket, 
far enough at sea to emphasize its separateness from *' the 
continent." Out of the season it has a still more delightful 
remoteness from the present. The daily steamer brings 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 401 

its welcome mail and certain supplies, but otherwise it is 
an intrusion. The island is quite self-contained. Perhaps 
the first impression on the mind of a visitor or guest is that 
of a real and genuine self-sufficiency. The streets of the old 
town so finely adjusted to its local needs and to its exercise 
of hospitality; the old but well-kept houses, of substance 
whether of brick or wood, their Captain's Walk, reminiscent 
of the early glories of the island; and the old wharves, 
though no longer lined with the ships of trade, still alive 
in the early morning or in the late afternoon with the 
fleets of smacks and schooners going and coming about the 
day's work — all these were a never-failing source of rest- 
ful diversion. But the chief delight of the island both to 
Mrs. Tucker and myself was the long stretch of the moors, 
with their deep-rutted roads through the stiff sand, car- 
peted with vines and clustered thick with dainty flowers in 
the spring which turned to the rich berries of the fall. To 
lie in the open sunshine in the tangled grasses of the moors 
or on the sands, was to take the healing tonic of Nature 
at its best, to feel the subtle invigoration which comes 
through the relaxing of the muscles and the easing of the 
whole tension of body and mind. During the stay on the 
island I was under the professional care of Dr. Grouard, 
a young physician highly trained in the schools at home 
and abroad, who had established himself on the island, 
whose practice was as greatly valued by summer residents 
as by the inhabitants. I owe much to his sympathetic and 
skillful treatment of my case during this period of con- 
valescence. Our home for the time, as indeed on later 
visits, was at Greynook, the house owned and managed 
by Miss Dexter and Miss Brayton, residents of Providence, 
but thoroughly at home in Nantucket. They had the true 



402 MY GENERATION 

art of the hostess, knowing precisely what to do and what 
not to do for their guests. Greynook stood on the chffs 
above the town, overlooking the breakwater and the har- 
bor lights, and the open sea to the west. From our windows 
we could sight the "Nantucket" and the "Sankaty" 
soon after they passed the Cross-Rip Lightship on the 
homeward trip. 

During my absence from the College the local duties of 
the oflBce were discharged by Acting President Lord, as- 
sisted by Secretary Hopkins; and in the partial resumption 
of these duties on my return I was increasingly indebted 
to the active cooperation of both Professor Lord and JVIr. 
Hopkins. The months of continued service, which had been 
promised to the Trustees, lengthened into the year, and 
the year into a second, while the unsuccessful search for 
a president went on. Outwardly the College kept its mo- 
mentum. There was no diminution in attendance. Build- 
ings which had been planned were carried to completion — 
Massachusetts and New Hampshire among the dormitories, 
the Nathan Smith (Medical) laboratory, Webster Alumni 
Hall, and the enlargement of Rollins Chapel. The nor- 
mal increase of the Faculty was maintained. An important 
addition to the annual resources of the College was intro- 
duced, in the action of the alumni at the annual meeting at 
Commencement in 1907, inaugurating a fund of yearly sub- 
scription for certain specified objects, after the manner of 
the Yale Alumni Fund. I was apprised of this action of the 
alumni while in Nantucket by the request through Mr. 
Hilton that the fund bear my name. Nothing could have 
been more grateful to me at the time than to have my 
name associated with this constant and constantly increas- 
ing source of financial supply to the College. And I have 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 403 

shared in the gratification of the whole ahimni body in the 
result of the subscription of 1917-18 through which the 
war deficit for that academic year was entirely wiped out, 
and a surplus left to be applied to special objects. 

As I have already remarked, a college president upon re- 
tirement should not allow himself to indulge overmuch in 
plans for his successor to carry out. Each new incumbent 
of the oflSce should have, so far as consistent with the nec- 
essary continuity of executive action, the unencumbered 
freedom of initiative. There were, however, at the time of 
the temporary withdrawal of my resignation, two plans 
affecting in different ways the interests of the Faculty that 
I had for some time had in mind, which I now relinquished 
with reluctance. One of them had to do with the increase of 
the productivity of the College in teachers of college grade. 
The deficiency of Dartmouth in this regard had begun to 
affect its own interests. There was of course the compensa- 
tion, already noted, in the enforced obligation to other col- 
leges for so large a proportion of its teaching force, that it 
insured the College against provincialism. But this safe- 
guard was maintained at the cost of academic productivity. 
Experience was beginning to show that this failure of the 
College to produce in proper proportion its own teachers 
meant an educational as well as an institutional loss. The 
loss was manifested especially in the unstable and imper- 
manent character of the lower grades of instruction. To 
remedy this state of affairs, several teaching scholarships 
and fellowships had been created. It was made a condition 
of receiving appointment to the fellowships that the recip- 
ients should hold themselves in readiness at the conclu- 
sion of their graduate study to teach for a year should the 
College need their service in the departments in which 



404 MY GENERATION 

they were qualified to instruct. A further aid and stimu- 
lus to a larger interest in college teaching was indicated in 
the policy of more careful and generous recognition of such 
graduates as had already shown the requisite aptitude 
and attainments for positions on the Faculty, as vacancies 
might occur. 

In the carrying-out of this purpose to increase the inter- 
est of the College in academic teaching, an incident occurred 
that disclosed a hitherto unsuspected sensitiveness in the re- 
lation between the professional and the executive concep- 
tions of college administration. An election to an assistant 
professorship in one of the departments was to be made. 
Among the instructors was one of special qualifications for 
the position. His promotion would have naturally followed, 
had the fact not become known, through an interview, that 
his interest was altogether in a related subject lying out- 
side the curriculum of a college, but included in the cur- 
riculum of a given university, from which university he 
hoped soon to receive an appointment. When asked if a 
continuance of his service in the grade of an instructor 
would be satisfactory to him while waiting for the expected 
transfer, he gave his assent to the proposal, and the elec- 
tion to the assistant professorship went to a well-qualified 
graduate, teaching elsewhere, on the ground that his elec- 
tion would give stability to the department. Of course this 
reason was specially evident from the institutional point of 
view. Exception, however, was at once taken by several 
members of the Faculty to the view and to the action fol- 
lowing, on the ground that it was a professional wrong to 
withhold a merited promotion, because the instructor con- 
cerned could give no assurance of continuing in the ad- 
vanced position if elected to it. It was claimed that in a pes- 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 405 

sible uncertainty about the tenure of a position, the benefit 
of any doubt should be given to a candidate for promotion 
rather than to the College in its institutional necessities. 
The incident aroused much feeling, but was soon closed by 
the acceptance of the instructor in question of an appoint- 
ment to the expected position in university teaching. I felt, 
however, that the closing of the incident did not settle the 
question to which it had given rise; and had time and 
strength allowed, I should have addressed myself to an 
attempt at the settlement of the underlying question. It 
seemed to me then as now that the question should not be 
conceived as having two sides, but only as involving a com- 
mon responsibility. The separation of the question into one 
of rights and responsibilities results in one form or another 
in the idea of arbitration. The solution of the problem lies, 
as I believe, in such a sharing of authority as will make 
the assumption of a common responsibility natural and 
necessary. 

The other plan arrested by my resignation had to do 
with the inauguration of a pension system. I confess that 
I had not gone beyond the idea of a "non-contributory" 
system. That in fact was the only system then before the 
pubhc. My distinct feeling was that it belonged to the Col- 
lege to provide the pension. I could see no logical reason 
why pensions should be assumed by an outside board any 
more than salaries in proportionate part. There seemed to 
me to be a decided objection in this partnership between a 
charitable board and a college, in the matter of meeting the 
annual expense of maintenance of the teaching force. The 
argument that a pension provided by a college would come 
to mean only deferred payment of salary suggested a liabil- 
ity, but did not to my mind imply a necessity. On the other 



4o6 MY GENERATION 

hand, I could see that a pension drawn from an outside 
source might be more grateful to some members of a faculty 
than one drawn from their college could be. Pensions drawn 
from the colleges might fetter the movement of professors. 
An outside pension might conduce to greater mobility. If 
the idea of substituting insurance for free pensions had 
then been proposed, I do not know how it would have 
impressed me. It now seems to be in many ways a desir- 
able as well as a necessary modification of the pension 
system. 

I may add in this connection that while the pension prob- 
lem was pending, Secretary Hopkins proposed a change in 
the terms of the Sabbatical year which made that system of 
much greater advantage to the majority of the Faculty 
than it had been, namely, the allowance of a half-year on 
full salary, instead of a full year on half -salary, leaving the 
choice to the individual professor. 

At the beginning of the second year under the temporary 
withdrawal of my resignation, I gave the opening address in 
Webster Hall and later an address on the return to the en- 
larged Rollins Chapel, but otherwise I confined myself for 
the most part to office work. I attended the regular and 
special meetings of the Trustees, and as far as possible the 
meetings of the Faculty. Before giving over the year's work 
I prepared, at the request of the Trustees, a report of the 
period of my administration addressed to the alumni, the 
scope of which may be inferred from the introductory 
statement: 

As my acceptance of the presidency in 1893 was associated 
with what was then known as "The Alumni Movement," the 
Trustees have thought it fit that upon my retirement I should 
make a separate and somewhat comprehensive report to you 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 



407 



concerning the administration of the college during the period 
of my incumbency. In submitting this report I do not care to 
dwell upon outward results further than may be necessary by 
way of illustration. I am anxious rather that you should under- 
stand the principles according to which the college has been ad- 
ministered during a well defined, and in some respects danger- 
ous, period in its history, namely, the period of reconstruction 
and expansion. Such periods are manifestly essential to the prog- 
ress of our older educational institutions. Whenever the general 
system of which they are a part demands of them readjustment 
and expansion the risks of inertia are far greater than the risks 
of innovation. I know of but one qualification to this statement 
— the treatment must be constructive. Lord Curzon has re- 
marked in a recent letter to the University of Oxford on the 
"Principles and Methods of University Reform," "We may 
learn from the experience of previous Commissions that success- 
ful reform at Oxford has almost invariably originated in recon- 
struction rather than in destruction; and that the institutions 
which last the longest and work the best are those which have 
been erected on older foundations, or, under skillful treatment, 
have assumed fresh and harmonious shapes," 

As I interpreted the needs of the College, when I assumed the 
presidency, the policy of reconstruction with a view to expansion 
seemed to me to be the only adequate policy. There were at that 
time certain facts of very great educational importance to be 
considered : the vast extension of the subject-matter of the higher 
education, involving corresponding advances in the methods of 
instruction; the rapid growth of high schools as fitting schools for 
the colleges, virtually creating a new college constituency; and 
the sudden increase of endowments and appropriations for col- 
leges and universities, making itself felt not so much in competi- 
tion as through an enlarged scale of expenditure. It was impos- 
sible to ignore or evade any one of these facts. The obligation 
resting upon an historic college like Dartmouth to preserve its 
well-recognized individuality was no more evident nor impera- 
tive than was the requirement that it should relate itself efl5- 
ciently to its new educational environment. 



4o8 MY GENERATION 

It is not to be inferred from the prolongation of my term' 
of official service that the Trustees were not earnest and 
diligent in their search for a president. They carried on 
their efforts steadily, unhampered by any restrictive influ- 
ences. They naturally sought at first a graduate of the Col- 
lege, but they did not allow themselves to come under this 
restriction. Of the two men with whom they conferred 
most fully in regard to the presidency, one was a graduate, 
the other was not. Their final choice fell upon one not a 
graduate of the College, but familiar with its inner work- 
ings through active service in an important professorship. 
It was with great satisfaction that they were able to an- 
nounce shortly before the Commencement of 1909 the 
election and acceptance of Dr. Ernest Fox Nichols, then 
at Columbia. Immediately upon this announcement I sent 
the following communication to the editor of " The Dart- 
mouth " : 

As there is no immediate opportunity of presenting Doctor 
Nichols to the undergraduates, allow me to give a word of intro- 
duction through your columns. Doctor Nichols belongs to our 
fellowship by the right of five years of brilliant service in the 
chair of Physics, a service recognized by the trustees by the hon- 
orary degree of Doctor of Science. But he is much more closely 
one of us by his sympathies. I have never attended a dinner of 
Dartmouth men in New York at which he was not present. He 
comes back to us as he left us, his heart unchanged. He returns 
with a reputation which has been increasing year by year at 
home and abroad. Few scholars in any department have gained 
the position which he holds as a man of forty. It is also his dis- 
tinction that he has won his place in a department crowded with 
workers intent on research. The change which he makes to ad- 
ministration does not require of him the sacrifice or repression 
of powers which have given him success. Doctor Nichols is es- 
sentially a man of imagination. He sees things that are to be, as 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 409 

well as things that are. For this reason I anticipate from him as 
brilliant a service in administration as he has rendered in re- 
search or instruction. I anticipate no less that through his per- 
sonality he will establish himself at once in the hearts of under- 
graduates and graduates of the College. 

June U, 1909 

It had been a great pleasure to me to present the Trus- 
tees to President-elect Nichols at a meeting held just after 
his election at which he was present by request of the Trus- 
tees. And it was no less a pleasure both to Mrs. Tucker and 
myself to be able to present the Faculty and their families, 
and the students, to Dr. and Mrs. Nichols at a reception 
arranged in their honor at College Hall. In the discharge of 
this most happy function my ofl&cial service practically ter- 
minated. I took no part in the formal exercises of the en- 
suing Commencement. The part which I took was much 
more personal than official — a virtual resumption of my 
place among the alumni through the following brief speech 
at the Alumni Dinner. 

Through the very great kindness of Acting President Lord [he 
had conferred the degrees] and also of my old-time friend Profes- 
sor Palmer of Harvard [who had given the Baccalaureate], I 
have been relieved of the more formal duties of the Commence- 
ment season. This relief enables me to sit at table with you to- 
day, and to take part briefly in the after-dinner speaking, though, 
I regret to say, through the written word. Very naturally my 
thought runs to-day to the relation between the transient and 
the permanent in our college life. This question of the transient 
and the permanent confronts us everywhere, but nowhere I 
think does it reach so happy a solution as here; for here we not 
only see, but feel, that the transient goes over into the perma- 
nent so naturally, almost so imperceptibly, and with such a com- 
pensating joy that hardly a sign is left of the change. And this 
for the very simple reason that a college is not so much an insti- 



410 



MY GENERATION 



tution as it is a movement, a procession. Nine tenths of all that 
pertains to a college is human, perhaps one tenth is material. I 
shall want to say something of the material embodiment of the 
College before I close, for it is very precious. But the perpetuity 
of a college lies in this ceaseless movement of life, in this ever- 
flowing stream which reaches the sea only to replenish the 
springs. Here, for example, are two hundred men who are to- 
day passing out of the transient into their, relatively permanent 
relation to the College. The undergraduate has his day. The 
coming years belong to the graduate. Go where he will, return as 
often as he will, present or absent, he is in and of the College, 
moving in its ample freedom. 

Here again are men to whom the permanent seems to be pass- 
ing back into the transient. The decades have gone which 
brought them to fifty, sixty, seventy, seventy-two years of grad- 
uate life. But here again the permanent is becoming the transient 
only to re-appear in the hope of a lasting permanency. Somehow 
our brethren as they become the men of the past seem to be 
nearer to the ever-living personality of the College than we are. 
I chanced to read the other day a reference of Mr. Choate to the 
words in which Mr. Webster brought the College before the 
Supreme Court, "I have brought my alma mater to this presence 
that if she must fall she may fall in her robes and with dignity." 
Those words were spoken ninety years ago. Who amongst us 
to-day are so much alive in our relation to the College as were 
the actors in that scene! 

Here again we are come to a distinct change in the organized 
life of the College itself, a change of administration. Every ad- 
ministration stands for certain things which are relatively tran- 
sient. When you have answered the questions which men so 
often ask, how much money, how many students, what new 
subjects, you have not necessarily said anything which relates 
itself very vitally to the future. These are only fragments of the 
great question which every administration has to answer, not 
what it has done for the College in the way of annual return of 
any sort, but further and chiefly, in what condition does it leave 
the College to meet the always urgent demands of its immediate 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 411 

future. What a given administration does to secure the success 
of the next is the test by which it must be judged. When I took 
over the College from Doctor Bartlett, there came over with the 
succession not only the effect of his intellectual character and 
achievements, but also the results of a brave, self-denying, sac- 
rificing administration. The decade of the 80's was a decade of 
financial struggle, sometimes expressing itself in sharp retrench- 
ment, sometimes in persistent solicitation. It was in no small 
degree the resolute force of Doctor Bartlett, compacting the 
body corporate, at the price of much effort and no little hard- 
ship, which made possible the era of expansion which was to fol- 
low. The administration which now goes out must meet the like 
test. What has it made possible for the incoming administration 
to accomplish? How firmly is the College established to meet the 
issues which await it? President Lowell has recently said that 
probably three fourths of the American educators have ceased 
to believe in the college as an integral part of the educational 
system. That is not his unbelief, he declares emphatically. But 
in the reassertion of his faith in Harvard College as well as in 
Harvard University, he announced distinctly one impending 
issue in our educational world. As my successor must make 
answer to present criticism or unbeliefs concerning the college 
idea, is this College, now his college, in condition to enable him 
to speak with authority concerning its own future, and with as- 
surance to others of its kind? It is for my successor to say, within 
the fair limits of the policy which he may adopt, what the imme- 
diate future of the College shall be. The present administration 
will have little or no value to him in this outlook, unless it shall 
appear that it has left the College in condition for him to say 
what its future shall be. According to the value of this contribu- 
tion the present administration passes away into the transient, 
or it passes out of the transient into the permanent. Some of the 
younger among you have been accustomed to speak of the New 
Dartmouth. Our President-elect in addressing the undergradu- 
ates the other day spoke of the newer Dartmouth. That was 
right; the new is always passing over into the newer. So doing, 
it lives. If it were not for this process, a college would not grow 
old, it would grow stale. 



412 MY GENERATION 

In the midst of the changes, however, which are involved as 
the transient gives way to the more permanent, it is quite easy 
to overestimate the element of change. Not infrequently the 
superficial aspects are emphasized. Not a little had been said in 
the daily press about the change of type represented in the elec- 
tion of a scientist to the presidency of Dartmouth College. I 
think that I have the mind of the trustees when I say that Doc- 
tor Nichols was elected to the presidency, not because he was a 
scientist in distinction from an economist, a classicist, or a psy- 
chologist, but rather because being a scientist, he had reached 
such distinction as to reveal the quality of his mind, and also 
because he had reached a position broad enough and clear 
enough to give him outlook in other directions. While he was 
with us it was always a delight to follow him, so far as one might, 
in his scientific researches; but outside his laboratory I thought 
of him as showing the spirit of the humanist or the idealist quite 
as much as the spirit of the more technical scientist. In the search 
of these modem days for a college president, trustees can dis- 
cover the man only through his work, which to be significant 
must always represent some degree of specialization, but their 
search is no less for the man, and in the present case they are 
assured that they have found him. 

I said as I began that nine tenths of all that pertains to a col- 
lege is human, but that the remaining tenth, the material em- 
bodiment of the college, was precious. Always in the background 
of this steady movement of life stands the ancestral home. The 
generations of college men come and go, and come back again 
and again. Thirty-five generations of men have come hither and 
gone hence, returning year by year in increasing throngs. 

" Though round the girded earth they roam 
The spell is on them still. 



" The mother keeps them in her heart 
And guards the Altar flame. 

** Aroimd the world they keep for her 
Their old chivalric faith." 



THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 413 

This is college sentiment. We must be careful how and where we 
apply it. When we apply it to ourselves as sons of Dartmouth, 
we may not use it to hide one another's faults or to exaggerate 
one another's virtues. Once out in the world where man meets 
man, we are in the open competition for honesty, justice, and 
charity. But when our hearts turn hitherward, we must not be 
afraid of sentiment. Let the mother of us all know, by visible 
and enduring signs, that you love her. Let her never be made 
ashamed, in any respect, for herself, not simply for her sons, as 
she stands with the years falling upon her in the midst of the 
older and the younger colleges of the land. Better yet, see to it 
that her strength is as the strength of the hills which guard her, 
and her beauty like their beauty, simple, true, sufficient. 



CHAPTER X 

"THE NEW RESERVATION OF TIME" 

A Partial Resumption of Literary and Semi-public Work 

When I closed the door of my office on July 15, the end 
of the fiscal year following the Commencement of 1909, I 
went to my home in much freedom of mind and with a cer- 
tain exhilaration of spirit. It was with more than a feeling of 
relief that I entered upon my retirement. First of all, there 
was the sense of satisfaction that the College was at length 
relieved of the burden of the last two years of "crippled 
leadership," and was now about to pass into the competent 
hands of my successor. Then, in regard to my own future, 
there was the satisfaction of knowing its limitations. The 
knowledge of one's limitations ought to be a source of con- 
tentment, or an incentive to utilize the powers still availa- 
ble. In my case there was first the sense of contentment, 
which, however, soon gave place to incentives to further ac- 
tivities. The limitation which was most definite and abso- 
lute was the restriction upon public speaking, a restriction 
in which I readily acquiesced. I had already become con- 
scious before receiving the sharp reminder of physical 
disability in this regard, that public speaking has other 
dangers which threaten with the approach of age. There 
lurks in the habit, even in the discipline which makes one a 
ready speaker, the growing danger of substituting the prac- 
ticed art for the thoroughly prepared thought. The neces- 
sity was not unwelcome to me which required for further 
public expression the change from speaking to writing. 
But the chief satisfaction growing out of my retirement 



THE NEW RESERVATION OF TIME 415 

lay in the fact that it gave at once a new meaning to the 
home. When I came to Hanover I bought of Professor Ar- 
thur Sherburne Hardy the house which he had built on a 
lot in the college park. This house I enlarged to make it ad- 
equate for the social functions and the entertainment of 
guests incident to official relations to the College. It was an 
attractive house in a pleasant location and in many ways 
served admirably the uses of a home, but it was always 
associated more with the College than with the family. 
As it stood in the midst of college property and was held 
under the proviso that if sold the College should have the 
first right of purchase, the Trustees bought it upon my re- 
tirement and refitted it for continued use as a president's 
house. Anticipating this purchase I had bought a lot on 
Occom Ridge, immediately overlooking the Connecticut 
and commanding a view of the Moosilauke Range lying 
to the northeast. The house we built on this site, to the 
arrangement of which Mrs. Tucker gave much thought, 
was designed altogether for a home, and also to meet the 
changed conditions of the family life. As the household 
itself grew smaller the family circle was enlarged by new 
households. The home became the natural center for the 
Christmas holidays and for all special family occasions 
such as the marriage of the youngest daughter and the 
christening of the younger grandchildren.^ 

^ The oldest daughter, Alice Lester, is the wife of Professor Frank Haigh 
Dixon, for twenty-one years head of the Department of Economics in Dart- 
mouth College and now Professor of Economics in Princeton University. Their 
children are William Tucker, Caroline Moorhouse, and Roger Coit (born on my 
seventy-fifth birthday). Margaret, the second daughter, is the wife of Judge 
Nelson Pierce Brown (Dartmouth, '99), of the Superior Court of Massachusetts. 
They have built a house in Hanover which they occupy as their summer home. 
Their children are Charlotte Rogers, Eleanor, Nelson Pierce, and Stanton. The 
youngest daughter, Elizabeth Washburn, is the wife jof Frank William Cushwa, 
Odiin Professor of English at Phillips Exeter Academy. Their children are 



41 6 MY GENERATION 

Once in our new home we were able to enter into the en- 
joyment of its local environment. Hanover lies in a region 
full of the most alluring opportunities to a lover of nature. 
It is in that part of the Connecticut Valley which is 
bounded on the Vermont side by the Killington Range, 
and on the New Hampshire side by the Moosilauke Range. 
Within a radius of ten miles from Hanover there are innu- 
merable points on either side of the river from which one 
sweeps the enclosing ranges, and from which one may also 
reach, through breaks in the New Hampshire Range, into 
the region of the White Mountains. Declining the motor, 
and leaving the motor roads, we studied the old maps which 
gave the abandoned roads over the hills, and taking our 
courageous "Bess," and our alert pointer "Ted," we ex- 
plored the neighboring country. I do not know whether our 
reward was greater from the nearer or from the more dis- 
tant views. I had bought, some years before, an abandoned 
farm on the western slope of Moose Mountain, which 
commanded the Killington Range from Ascutney to Pico, 
giving also a glimpse to the north of Moosilauke. As time 
allowed, we used to drive occasionally to the farm (such 
only in name), but we were now able to put ourselves on 
familiar terms with the neighboring streams and hills 
within reach of one who could no longer tramp or climb. 

The withdrawal from all public engagements allowed me 
ample time for such work as my strength would permit; 
but this qualification very materially reduced the value of 
the allowance. The situation was anomalous, for I found 
that the zest for work was not at all reduced in proportion 

Charlotte Cheever and William Tucker (born February 21, 1919). My only 
sister, the widow of David Collin Wells, first Professor of Sociology in Dart- 
mouth College, has continued to live in Hanover since the death of her husband 
in 1911. 



THE NEW RESERVATION OF TIME 417 

to the decline of working strength. This fact led me to re- 
flect upon the status of those who under the new provisions 
for old age — chiefly retiring allowances or pensions — 
were withdrawing from educational and other pursuits 
while still in efiicient health. These reflections, emphasized 
by my own experience so far as it was in evidence, I em- 
bodied in an article for the "Atlantic Monthly," under 
date of August, 1910, entitled "The New Reservation of 
Time." In this article I endeavored to show the changed 
attitude in which it was possible under this "reservation" 
to approach 

"... that unhoped serene 
That men call age." 

It is evident [I remarked] that a new principle has been set at 
work in the social order. Society is fast becoming reorganized 
around the principle of a definite allotment of time to the indi- 
vidual for the fulfillment of his part in the ordinary tasks and 
employments. The termination of his period of associated labor 
has been fixed within the decade which falls between his "three- 
score," and his "threescore and ten" years. The intention of 
society in trying to bring about this uniform, and, as it will 
prove to be in most cases, reduced, allotment of time for the 
ordinary life-work of the individual, is twofold. . . . The first 
intention is evidently to secure the greatest efficiency, in some 
employments the best quality of work, in others the largest 
amount. . . . The second, if not equally plain intention of society 
is to make some adequate provision in time for the individual 
worker before he becomes a spent force. It therefore creates for 
him a reservation of time sufficient for his more personal uses. 
Within this new region of personal freedom he may enter upon 
any pursuits, or engage in any activities required by his personal 
necessities or prompted by newly awakened ambitions. 

I am not now concerned [I further remarked] with the results 
which society seeks to gain in carrying out its first intention. I 
think that the intention lies within the ethics of business, and 



41 8 MY GENERATION 

that the results to be gained may be expected to warrant the 
proposed allotment of time. But what [I asked] of the second in- 
tention of society? How far is it likely to be reahzed? What will 
be the effect of the scheme upon those now entering, and upon 
those who may hereafter enter, on the reservation of time pro- 
vided for them? What is to be their habit of mind, their dis- 
position, toward the reserved years which have heretofore been 
reckoned simply as the years of age? Will this change in the or- 
dering of the individual life intensify the reproach of age, or 
remove it? Will the exceptional worker in the ranks of manual 
or intellectual labor, but especially the latter, who feels that he 
is by no means a spent force, accept reluctantly the provision 
made for him, as if closing his life-work prematurely, or will he 
accept it hopefully, as if opening a new field for his unspent 
energies? And as for the average worker, to whom the change 
will doubtless bring a sense of relief, will he enter upon the 
new "estate" aimlessly, or "reverently, discreetly, advisedly, 
soberly," and withal in good temper and cheer? 

In my own case I was ready to respond to these ques- 
tions with good disposition and intention, but it was impos- 
sible for me to base my response upon the assurance or 
expectancy of long-continued working strength. This fact 
precluded the possibility of a working programme. There 
were congenial subjects which invited careful and somewhat 
protracted investigation, but I could give myself no prom- 
ise of any completed result. The limitations of health pre- 
scribed the range of my work in my study. There were two 
pieces of literary work at hand that called for nothing more 
than editorial revision. The first was the collection of va- 
rious public addresses that seemed to have some permanent 
value, growing out of the occasions which called them forth, 
or the subjects which came under discussion, making up 
the volume already referred to under the title "Public- 
Mindedness." The second was a collection of formal but 



THE NEW RESERVATION OF TIME 419 

intimate addresses given in the course of my official con- 
tact with the students of the College and associated with 
Rollins Chapel or Webster Hall, making the volume al- 
ready referred to under the title "Personal Power." The 
former book answered its purpose as a repository of "oc- 
casional" addresses, and when the edition was exhausted, 
passed out of print. The latter has had a continuous sale, 
still following the successive college generations. 

The only new work which I attempted at this time was 
the preparation of a monograph on "The Function of the 
Church in Modern Society " — one of a series on Modern 
Religious Problems, under the editorship of Dr. Ambrose 
W. Vernon, pubhshed by Houghton Mifflin Company, and 
later transferred to the Pilgrim Press. 

In 1911 my college class, known in its day from its war- 
time associations as the "Roys of '61," held its fiftieth re- 
imion. Out of sixty-six who graduated, twenty-three were 
living, twelve of whom were present at the reunion. I had 
the very great pleasure of spending the leisure hours of 
Commencement with them, of presenting them to President 
Nichols, and of greeting them at my table for an evening of 
"good talk." I noticed that some of the men had grown 
rather abstemious in their diet, and that the hour of re- 
tirement had been moved back perceptibly, but otherwise 
it was the same as of old, except for the drawing a little 
closer together: The intervening years had obliterated all 
possible lines of difference, and out of varied experiences in 
life had brought us all to essentially one view of life itself. 
It was an occasion of good cheer touched with the humor 
of the seasoned wits of our number, and enriched with the 
reminders of things well worth remembering which had 
been said and done by the men of the class. 



420 MY GENERATION 

This eddy in the current of the college life was also a 
pleasing reminder of my changed relation to the College. 
It is no strain upon the original meaning of the prefix in 
the title of ex-president to say that the "ex" means out of 
it, a meaning not limited to its application to time, nor yet 
changed in its scope when by the courtesy of the ruling au- 
thorities it is changed to the aflSx of "emeritus." I had al- 
ways entertained this view of the honorable obhgation of 
withdrawing from college affairs which should follow an ex- 
ecutive officer into retirement, and was supported in it by 
the most admirable behavior of my predecessor, ex-Presi- 
dent Bartlett. I had so announced my view in the closing 
words of my report to the alumni at the end of my admin- 
istration. Referring to their responsiveness to my plans for 
the College I said to them: 

I can ask for my successor nothing more and nothing less than 
the continuance of this spirit. I go further and suggest to you 
as alumni, that the most encouraging expression of this spirit 
which you can give to him is the assurance that you allow and 
expect on his part perfect freedom of initiative. The problems 
now before the College are not those of reconstruction and ex- 
pansion. Whenever the new issues are defined, and the policy 
designed to meet them is set forth, the timely and effective ways 
of cooperation will disclose themselves. I am confident that the 
graduates of Dartmouth will not overlook or neglect the greater 
opportunities which lie in the immediate future of the College. 

And now that my turn had come to put this view into 
practice, I found the practice not a duty, but a pleasure, 
made doubly pleasing by the cordial personal relations 
with Dr. Nichols, and by my interest as an alumnus in his 
plans for the College. It was very gratifying to me to 
see the heartiness and steadiness of the support given by 
the alumni and constituency of the College to President 



THE NEW RESERVATION OF TIME 421 

Nichols. His resignation after seven years, in the midst of 
successful service, to resume his professional work, was a 
surprise to me. I had not known the strength of the un- 
dertow which had been steadily drawing him back into 
the deeper waters of scientific research. His return to his 
earlier work was a conspicuous illustration of the greater 
hold which the special has upon some men above the 
general. Twice already in the history of Dartmouth its 
presidents had resigned to return to the profession. 

It was to be assumed from my intimate relations with 
Secretary Hopkins that I should be peculiarly interested 
in the course of his administration when he was called to^ 
the presidency. I have been much more than interested. 
President Hopkins was confronted on his entrance upon 
his administration with those serious though general prob- 
lems which had been already created by the War. Within a 
year the country itself was at war and the colleges became 
directly involved in it; at first, through their voluntary 
response to the call of the Government; later, through their 
militarization. As I have followed the course of President 
Hopkins in these circumstances, I do not know whether he 
is entitled to greater respect for the loyalty of his personal 
service to the government or for the sagacity of his man- 
agement of the College — the boldness of his financial 
^ plans, the firmness of his adherence on behalf of the College 
to its educational standards. Many tests of educational 
leadership now await the presidents of our colleges, but 
the tests already made in the administration of President 
Hopkins give reason for confident assurance respecting the 
future of Dartmouth. 

The course of events in the political world in 1912 
brought me back to a renewed interest in social questions. 



422 MY GENERATION 

and led me to take further part in the discussion of the prin- 
ciples and methods of social progress. In the national cam- 
paign of that year many of the active supporters of the gen- 
eral progressive movement urged the organization of the 
movement into a political party. To this purpose I was 
definitely and seriously opposed. I saw no more reason 
for this course than there was for the organization of the 
progressive movement in theology and religion into a new 
sect. Such a course in either case seemed to me to be a nar- 
rowing and belittling process, fraught in the case of the 
venture into the field of " practical politics " with all the 
dangers and distractions inherent in this kind of politics. 
My objection increased as I saw the attitude of so consid- 
erable a number of the Progressives toward Mr. Roose- 
velt. The singular obsession of mind in regard to him 
seemed to me to lead inevitably to an unworthy use of his 
splendid personality, even with his sanction, and to a con- 
sequent perversion of the cause itself from progressivism 
to Rooseveltism. The later action of Mr. Roosevelt in de- 
clining to perpetuate the "Progressive Party" organiza- 
tion, accompanied by his return to the Republican Party 
where his influence was much needed, brought back his 
personality to its normal use, a use to be greatly enhanced 
during the War by the call upon his patriotism. It was 
also a great satisfaction to the friends of Mr. Roosevelt 
and Mr. Taft that the unnatural estrangement, caused so 
largely by ill-advised partisans, should have been brought 
to an end before the death of Mr. Roosevelt, and the old- 
time friendship so completely restored. 

My protest, occasioned by the request of a weekly jour- 
nal for the opinion of some persons in its constituency on the 
political situation, called out many replies both in private 



THE NEW RESERVATION OF TIME 423 

and in public, some in anger, some in grief. This effect was 
to have been expected in a political campaign, and required 
only passing attention, except in the case of some personal 
friends especially among younger men. But the situation 
itself led me to renewed study into the principles and meth- 
ods of social progress. The first result of this more advanced 
study was an "Atlantic" article (October, 1913) on "The 
Goal of Equality." Relating this article to the Phi Beta 
Kappa Address on " The New Movement from Liberty to 
Unity," I acknowledged the arrest of this movement by the 
incoming of a new and more intense movement toward 
equality, the result in large degree of the rapid growth of 
class consciousness in the ranks of labor. I sought to inter- 
pret the meaning of this bold interruption by pointing out 
the failure of political hberty to secure the economic qual- 
ity demanded. Liberty and equality, as I pointed out, are 
concerned with different objects, for under present condi- 
tions they operate within different spheres — the political 
and the economic. "What," I asked, "is the essential dis- 
tinction between the pohtical world of yesterday, from 
which we have inherited many unfinished tasks, and the 
economic world of to-day, which is confronting us with new 
tasks which are as yet mostly in the form of problems.''" 
My answer was that the ruling conception of the political 
world was, and is, the conception of rights. The ruling con- 
ception of the economic world is the conception of values. 
Political progress toward equality — it has been very great 
— has come about through the recognition of rights. Eco- 
nomic progress toward equality, if it is to be equally marked, 
must come about through a like recognition of values. 

In this distinction between rights and values [I went on to 
say] we have the reason of the present advanced demand for 



424 MY GENERATION 

equality. The kind of equality now demanded is based not so 
much on the sense of rights as on the sense of values. The cause 
of equality inherits through democracy the right of equal op- 
portunity. It is still the function of political liberty to guard 
the right. But new economic conditions call for an equality 
estimated in terms of value according to service rendered. My 
contention is that the satisfaction of this particular demand lies 
outside the province of politics, unless we accept the tenets of 
political socialism. The logic of the political invasion of the eco- 
nomic world, beyond the endeavor to guarantee equality of op- 
portunity, is the socialistic state. . . . 

The strike, for example, is a legitimate economic weapon; as a 
political threat it is utterly illegitimate. Carried over into poli- 
tics, a strike becomes a revolution. Revolutionary methods have 
no justification except in the vindication of human rights. They 
have no place in the settlement of economic values. Should they 
be adopted by organized labor they would make organized 
labor a political outlaw. 

Another article followed in due time ("Atlantic," Sep- 
tember, 1915) of a more comprehensive character on "The 
Progress of the Social Conscience." After discriminating 
between the action of the social conscience and moral 
agencies with which it is often confounded, I said that its 
progress had been best reflected by the changes which it 
had brought about in public opinion, — the power which 
brings things to pass in a democracy. In confirmation of 
this statement, its progress was traced in the field of philan- 
thropy, in the advance from charity to justice; in legisla- 
tion, in the definiteness and persistence of the struggle 
with monopoly; in politics, in the new "sense of the State," 
indicated by the venture into "practical politics" even 
though in some respects a false move; in practical eco- 
nomics, in the sympathetic and determined effort to hu- 
manize industrialism; and in the field of social and civic 



THE NEW RESERVATION OF TIME 425 

advancement, in the growing openness of mind toward the 
entrance of woman into civic life. 

[In the original draft of this article, the moral determi- 
nation evinced in the prohibition movement was cited in 
evidence of the progress of the social conscience, but this 
section was withdrawn in view of the excessive length of 
the article. Recently I received a letter from one of the 
most sane and effective advocates of prohibition in which 
he wrote, "You taught me to respect prohibition." This 
word has always interpreted, to my mind, the necessary 
attitude of society to this method of temperance reform, 
if it is to be successful. There are unlikeable aspects of 
prohibition which society cannot be expected to ignore. 
Government is put to a heavy strain because of them in 
the administration of prohibitory laws. Society can learn 
to respect prohibition only as it reaches the stage of self- 
respect in its treatment of the liquor problem. When 
it has reached this stage and has determined to free the 
nation from the mortgage of the hquor traffic upon the 
national resources and the national vitality, its respect for 
prohibition as the only adequate means of accomplishing 
this result takes the place of former dislikes and preju- 
dices. The analogy at this point between prohibition and 
conscription is evident. Nothing could have been more 
unpopular or even revolting to many minds at the first 
than the substitution of the draft for enlistment. The 
present estimation of the draft accords with the result 
effected by it. We now see it in the light of its adequacy. 
Similarly the estimate of prohibition is changing, now that 
it has received the moral support of the nation. This new 
aspect is brought out in very striking terms in the leading 
editorial of the London "Spectator" under date of January 



426 MY GENERATION 

25, 1919: "The decision of more than three quarters of the 
States in America to prohibit intoxicating drink is a pohti- 
cal and industrial portent which no thinking person can 
disregard. . . . The one thing that is certain is that the 
American portent cannot safely be laughed away as the 
act of a few social experimenters and high-souled cranks. 
Right or wrong, practicable or impracticable, it is the con- 
sidered word of a great nation."] 

A somewhat detached article written on the occasion 
of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the South End (Andover) 
House entitled "Twenty-five Years in Residence" ("At- 
lantic," May, 1917), set forth the underlying principle of 
the social settlements, now numbering over five hundred, 
and the contribution which they had made to social and 
civic progress. 

The Phi Beta Kappa Address, and the "Atlantic" arti- 
cles, taken in connection with an earlier paper in criticism 
of Mr. Carnegie's "Gospel of Wealth" ("Andover Re- 
view," June, 1891), give whatever may have been distinc- 
tive in my advocacy of the new social order. Upon reflec- 
tion, I renew the emphasis placed upon the relation of 
rights and values in a democracy. I am convinced that any 
political reconstructions in the interest of democracy which 
may follow the War, must be based upon a revaluation of 
social classes. Such an outcome is foreshadowed in the 
recognition accorded the views of the wiser English labor 
leaders. A full recognition of the new values to the State . 
contributed by the producing classes, will do very much 
to make the democracies safe from within, and also to 
enable them to preserve their identity in the chaos of po- 
litical ideals. A purely socialistic state, according to any 
accurate definitions of socialistic authorities, has more 



THE NEW RESERVATION OF TIME 427 

affinity with the Teutonic militaristic conception of the 
State than with the democratic conception of the Anglo- 
Saxon democracies. 

With the advent of the War, the social question and all 
others of importance gave way before the supreme question 
of the hour. I refer to the War as a question advisedly. 
The mind of the world suddenly became one vast interro- 
gation. The order of questioning as it emerged from the 
prevailing confusion was first, What was the occasion of 
the War, then. What was its cause? finally, What was its 
meaning? I have never felt that sufficient consideration 
was given at the time or later to the terrible tragedy at 
Serajevo which was the initial event. The reason, however, 
for this lack of consideration was evident. While the world 
saw that the occasion belonged within the racial conditions 
of the Austrian Empire and was disposed to a certain 
sympathy toward Austria, it soon saw with unmistakable 
clearness that the instigating and persistent cause was to 
be traced to Germany. But still the questions remained — 
What did the War mean? What did it mean to Germany? 
WTiat was the real content of the mind of Germany in 
which the War was conceived and by which it was nour- 
ished and maintained? In attempting to find sufficient an- 
swers to these questions, it seemed to me that we must go 
beneath the ordinary understanding of militarism, the term 
which had become the generally accepted explanation of 
the War. Militarism was the phenomenal aspect, sudden 
and starthng in its appearance, but dangerous because it 
meant in the last analysis not so much the assertion or 
over-assertion of military power, as the assumption of 
moral prerogative. Beneath armaments and organization 
lay the political theory upon which militarism rested and 
from which it drew its life — the State is power. 



428 MY GENERATION 

It was this view of the War which seemed to accord with 
the underlying facts and to give to the War its real mean- 
ing. It was in reality more distinctly an ethical than a mil- 
itary war. It surpassed other wars in the degree of its 
military organization and equipment; it differed from other 
wars in the new moral conception of the State which it ' ^ 
thrust upon the world. Under the impulse of this sense 
of the meaning of the War, I wrote an article on its ethi- 
cal significance — "The Ethical Challenge of the War" 
("Atlantic," June, 1915), from which I take the following 
extract as showing its scope: 

Whatever the War may or may not declare in regard to other 
matters, it calls the attention of the civilized world to the new 
moral valuation which it puts upon the power of the State. 
Tracing the war back to the teachings in which it had its origin, 
we find in them the constant idealization of power, at times al- 
most the deification of it. The most authoritative teachings have 
been only an ampler statement of the Machiavellian axiom that 
the State is power. "The highest moral duty of the State is to 
increase its power." "War is the mighty continuation of poli- 
tics." "Of all political sins, that of weakness is the most repre- 
hensible and the most contemptible; it is in politics the sin 
against the Holy Ghost." It will give a proper background to 
these teachings to have in mind Milton's conception of the State : 
"A nation ought to be but as one huge Christian personage, one 
mighty growth or stature of an honest man, as big and compact 
in virtue as in body, for look, what the ground and causes are 
of single happiness to one man, the same ye shall find them to 
be to a whole State." 

The question of the essential morality of power when em- 
bodied in the State, which is thrust upon us as the ethical chal- 
lenge of the War, is the most serious public question which we 
have to face. Cotaing before us as a challenge, it calls us back to 
things fundamental, both in politics and in religion. To reverse 
in part Mr. Cleveland's saying, we find ourselves confronted. 



THE NEW RESERVATION OF TIME 429 

not so much by a condition, appalling as that is in which all 
nations are now involved, as by a theory which is likely to out- 
live the War, whatever may be its fortune, and to present itself 
to each nation for definition. It is a theory which has a most in- 
^sidious fascination. There is no allurement so great when the 
mind turns to affairs of state as the allurement of power. Clothe 
the bare conception of power with the moral sanctities and it 
becomes not only alluring, but commanding. In this form it 
presents itself to us, and at a time of great doubt and perplexity 
in regard to subjects but lately in the category of commonplace 
realities — democracy, patriotism, and religion. Speaking with 
the assurance, if not with the audacity, of the half-truth, it says 
to us. Your democracy, your patriotism, your religion are obso- 
lete. They are all guilty of inadequacy. If you would keep your 
place in the modern world, you must recast your fundamental 
conceptions of the State, and of the things which belong to it, in 
terms of power, and reinvigorate them with its spirit. 

The views expressed in this introductory passage and in 
the subsequent discussion now seem quite commonplace, 
but as put forth at the beginning of the War, with the em- 
phasis which they placed on its ethical character, they 
elicited much approval from men whose opinion I greatly 
valued. Among the letters received directly or through the 
office of the "Atlantic," I quote from two which were of 
special interest to me — one from a well-known English- 
man, for many years Rector of St. George's Church, New 
York, the other of a more personal character from one of 
the Judges of the United States District Court. 

Savin Hill, Ridgefield, Conn. 
The Editor, 

Atlantic Monthly 
Dear Sir, 

Let me thank you for your part in giving to the public the 
quite masterly article by Mr. Tucker, "The Ethical Challenge 



430 



MY GENERATION 



of the Times." I have read widely the literature of the war, but 
this article seems to me in its lucidity, grasp, and supreme moral 
force, to stand almost in a class by itself. 

I am, dear Sir, truly yours 

William S. Rainsford 

United States District Court 

New York 

Judges' Chambers 

May 30, '15 

Dear Doctor Tucker, 

Yesterday's mail brought me the last "Atlantic." To-day I 
thank you with real earnestness for the most illuminating and 
guiding sermon, speech, or thesis as yet contributed to this crisis 
in world history. You have helped me — at all events — to 
think; a task which to most of us seems harder as years lengthen. 
Very sincerely yours 

Charles M. Hough 

It may be of interest to follow the course of thought into 
which this conception of the War led as certain events or 
incidents seem to call for public treatment. I note the title 
of succeeding articles or communications called out by the 
moral trend of the War, and indicate by brief quotations 
the scope of the discussion. 

" The Crux of the Peace Problem " (" Atlantic Monthly," 
April, 1916) — an exposure of the moral inefficiency of the 
j>eace movement on account of its failure to become iden- 
tified with the righteous ends of the War. 

The problem of peace, for such the peace movement has now 
become, does not lie in the conviction of its impracticability, 
unless it be deemed morally impracticable. The suggestion of 
the moral impracticability of peace seems like a contradiction 
of terms. Nevertheless, if we follow it but a little way, it will lead 
to the disquieting discovery of a very strong suspicion in the 
popular mind of a latent selfishness in peace; and further, after 
due observation and reflection, we shall be brought, I think, to 



THE NEW RESERVATION OF TIME 431 

see that the very crux of the problem of peace lies in the difficulty 
of eradicating this suspicion. The awful immoralities of war, so 
terribly obvious, are offset in part by the counteracting effect of 
the impressive displays of unselfishness. 

War, in itself essentially evil, may acquire moral character as 
the instrumentality for serving a righteous cause. Peace, in itself 
essentially good, may lose moral character from the failure to 
identify itself with a righteous cause in the time of its extremity. 
I trace the popular suspicion of a latent selfishness in peace 
to its undefined and indeterminate attitude in so many cases 
toward ends outside and beyond itself. The constant insistence 
upon peace as an end in itself is to be deprecated. If we are to 
create confidence in the trustworthiness of peace to render that 
sacrificial service which is at times rendered so effectively 
through war, it must be made to wear a different aspect from 
that which it now presents to the world. 

To the degree in which we fail to clothe peace with moral 
power, to identify it with the objects of moral concern, to make 
it the incentive and opportunity for sacrifice and heroism, we 
leave it under the popular imputation of selfishness. I follow 
out the danger from this defect in our advocacy of peace into 
sufficient detail to indicate the extent of the popular distrust, 
and to show the grounds of it. 

"On the Control of Modem Civilization" (the last chap- 
ter of the book "The New Reservation of Time" — No- 
vember, 1916) — a discussion of the responsibility of a given 
generation for the course of civilization within its limits, 
made urgent by the fact that no generation before was 
ever confronted so directly with the danger of an uncon- 
trolled civilization. 

Modern civilization has been by distinction a civilization of 
power. Its cultural effects, though clear and distinct, have been 
secondary. It has been a civilization of natural forces, of physical 
laws, of mechanical devices, of organization. The exponent of 
its power, and of its beneficence, is the machine. The progress of 



432 MY GENERATION 

mechanical invention measures the advance of material welfare. 
We are all conscious that we have become the passive benefici- 
aries, or the passive instruments, of the civilization which domi- 
nates our lives. 

In what has thus come to be the habitual reliance upon material 
power we have, I think, the explanation of the otherwise strange 
contradiction in the experiences of the modern man; on the 
one hand, a sense of power rising at times to arrogance, and on 
the other hand, a sense of helplessness involving at times an 
abject surrender to the environment. In our more confident 
moods we vaunt our alliance with the forces of nature, but not 
infrequently we are made to feel that we have to do with things 
which are irresistible and inevitable. Something of this sense of 
the irresistible and the inevitable has come over us in the ret- 
rospect of the causes, the agencies, and the instrumentalities 
which worked together toward the War. We see the steady, 
cumulative power of the material forces which were in operation. 
The retrospect discloses no counteracting human agencies at 
work equal to the task. 

The War has ploughed deep into the life of individuals as well 
as of nations. Many of the questions which it has started are out 
of reach of diplomacy and statesmanship. The complete question 
is not the reconstruction of Europe, nor yet that of absolutism 
or democracy. There is, I believe, a growing sense that we do not 
reach the essential issues involved till we come into conscious 
and responsible relation to the civilization which allowed the 
War and brought it to so great magnitude. Any result, commen- 
surate with the War, must consist in some corresponding change 
effected in the spirit and temper of the civilization which gave 
it its vitality and scope. 

"Not Yet in the Name of Religion" ( " Boston Evening 
Transcript," August 29, 1917, also a " Dartmouth College 
Reprint ") — in reply to the proposal of the Pope for in- 
tervention in the interest of peace: 

To find the true and suflBcient ground for the world's indict- 
ment of Germany we must go back to that ancient formula put 



THE NEW RESERVATION OF TIME 433 

forth in the name of rehgion, which the world has accepted in 
its inexorable simplicity as the code of national as well as in- 
dividual righteousness: " It hath been showed thee, O Man, what 
is good, and what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, 
to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God." This code 
antedates Christianity. What article of the code did Christ 
repeal, or under what circumstances was the suspension of 
it wholly or in part to be allowed, or the violation of it to be 
condoned.? 

Germany, as the world knows, has persistently violated every 
article of the code. What is of greater present significance, the 
German autocracy has openly repealed the code itself. It has 
set up the worship of a new God, the God of Power, in whose 
name and by whose authority the virtues of justice, mercy, and 
humility are to be replaced by virtues better adapted to the 
exigencies of war. In the event of passing from war to diplo- 
macy, we are asked to deal, on the ambiguous "principle of 
entire and reciprocal condonation," with the mind of a nation 
indoctrinated in the new code of national righteousness. In 
view of this proposal, that requirement of the ancient code 
which had seemed least pertinent to present conditions is 
seen to be highly important. What is to be the nature of the 
diplomatic approach to a nation which has divested itself of 
humility and is allowed to remain of unhumbled mind? It be- 
comes necessary to have a right understanding at this point 
of the national mind of Germany, lest we find that it offers a 
greater barrier to an honorable and lasting peace than German 
arms. 

The untimeliness of the proposed intervention was urged 
from the following considerations — first, increasing evi- 
dences of the unhumbled mind of Germany as seen in the 
spread of the cult of world dominion under the guise of 
Pan-Germanism; second, the absence of any clear insist- 
ence upon reparation in the proposed "intervention"; 
third, the greater timeliness of the entrance of the United 



434 MY GENERATION 

States into the War as the most effective of all possible 
peace movements. 

[The question of the mind of Germany still remains, un- 
der the marvelous change of conditions, the most anxious 
question of the Allies. On the one hand, it is not displeasing 
to see the earnestness of Germany in its efforts toward the 
reconstruction of the State on a more democratic basis. As 
I said in the article, "no sane man desires the humiliation 
of Germany." It is better for the world that Germany 
should be allowed to regain a place in the family of respon- 
sible nations than be forced to remain in a state of perma- 
nent outlawry. On the other hand, there is much unwel- 
come doubt about the attitude of Germany toward the 
vital matter of reparation. As I also said, "Reparation is 
the moral issue of the War, the moral condition of peace." 
There can be no moral conclusion of the War until Ger- 
many makes substantial amend for the terrible and wanton 
desolation of the War, and until she acknowledges the hei- 
nousness of incorporating into the practices of war the 
awful doctrine of atrocity and f rightfulness. Possibly there 
is a ray of hope at this point in the exclamation of a Ger- 
man soldier, quoted with apparent approval by Maximilian 
of Raden, on the grounds of the feeling of the world toward 
Germany, "Heaven preserve Germany from emerging 
from this War without a character."] 

To these public utterances I add the following communi- 
cation to the "New York Times" of June 13, 1918, as 
touching upon a subject which has since become a matter 
of much discussion and of divided opinion, involving a cer- 
tain amount of criticism of the position here taken : 

To the Editor of The New York Times: 1 assume that all loyal 
Americans are in sympathy with the motives which governed 



THE NEW RESERVATION OF TIME 435 

the Board of Education in the City of New York in its recent 
ruhng regarding further instruction in German in the pubhc 
schools of the city, but I question if the reasons given for its 
action are such as will commend it for adoption as a national 
policy. The intellectual task which the nation has set for the 
generation now in the public schools is to combat German ideas, 
a far more serious business than to boycott them. This contro- 
verting of Germany within the whole field of the political morali- 
ties is the task to which the President has summoned the nation 
at large, not simply for national defense, but also for aggressive 
aid in behalf of the oppressed nationalities. 

But the first step in controverting Germany is to know Ger- 
many. It is a bad beginning to deprive the coming generation of 
the ready knowledge of the rudiments of the German language. 
The answer of Germany to this "attempt to shake the morale of 
the German people by causing them to realize that this great 
city was unwilling to endure longer their language, and that it 
desired to break off thus more completely the possibility of inti- 
mate relations with them through the medium of language" 
will be, if consistent with past methods, to redouble the study 
of English in the German schools. Germany has never yet made 
the mistake of committing its propaganda to even the least con- 
spicuous of its subjects without furnishing adequate and timely 
equipment. 

Allowing the proper reservation of diplomacy and of political 
ethics to the experts, elsewhere, in trade, in travel, in the com- 
mon intercourse of men the world over, the impending combat 
is to be one in which any man may take his part according to 
his trained intelligence. Unintelligent patriotism can evidently 
have little part in this field of patriotic endeavor. I deprecate 
any superficiality, or narrowness, or timorousness, or weakness 
of any sort in preparing the generation now in the schools for 
the really militant service which awaits it in the cause of inter- 
national as well as of national righteousness. We tried to ignore 
the challenge of German Militarism. The result was national 
unpreparedness. Have we any excuse for a like unprepared- 
ness in meeting the challenge of German Kultur? 

William Jewett Tucker 



436 MY GENERATION 

This criticism was directed against the proposed method 
of carrying on the intellectual combat with Germany. If we 
are to combat German ideas somebody must know Ger- 
man. To put this task altogether upon the colleges, at least 
in the elementary stages, would be undemocratic. To as- 
sume that such knowledge is unnecessary is simply a rever- 
sion to a state of mind corresponding to that which led so 
many to regard the militia of the country as equivalent to 
an army. 

I can understand that there may be need of great modi- 
fications in the teaching of German in the public schools; 
I can understand that there may have been local reasons 
in some cities which justified the suspension of the teaching 
of German during the War; but to urge the elimination of 
German from schools and colleges as a definite national 
policy is, in my view, to urge a retreat rather than an 
advance, and is thereby sure, if the policy is adopted, to 
affect the national morale. Without doubt the movement 
is well under way. It has entered the stage of popular enthu- 
siasm and popular satisfaction, the satisfaction which grows 
out of the feeling that something of consequence is actu- 
ally being done. It is to be feared that it has yet to encoun- 
ter those liabilities which marked the later stages of the 
"Know-Nothing" movement of two generations ago as it 
ran its rapid and sweeping career under the guise of super- 
Americanism. 

As an example of sane and effective Americanism, the 
specific work in Americanization which is going on in many 
parts of the country cannot be too strongly endorsed. I 
quote from the programme of the New Hampshire Com- 
mittee, the Honorable Frank S. Streeter, Chairman, the 
following statement of the object of the organization — 



THE NEW RESERVATION OF TIME 437 

"that all our citizens of whatever race should be able to 
converse and do business together in one common lan- 
guage is vitally essential for good citizenship and for the 
well-being and the preservation of a form of government 
like ours, the security of whose foundations rest solely on 
the sound public opinion of the electorate." As an essen- 
tial means of carrying out this object the demand is made 
that all elementary instruction in the private as well as 
public schools of the State be carried on exclusively in the 
English language. 

Here is something positive and constructive, of universal 
application and of permanent national value. In due time 
there may be fitly added to this demand the requirement 
of compulsory training in those principles and methods of 
the Government of the United States wliich have given it 
its distinctive place among the nations, and which have 
drawn to our shores so large a part of the non-English im- 
migration of the past century. It is becoming increasingly 
and painfully evident that the insidious propaganda which 
is now undermining democracy abroad, is being introduced 
through various classes of our alien population into this 
country. The process of Americanization makes far-reach- 
ing demands upon our system of national education, and 
also calls for the most careful reconsideration of the prin- 
ciples and methods of industrialism. It is really a twofold 
task — to train our alien population in citizenship, and to 
train ourselves to the new and larger meaning of industri- 
alism. 

It is also to be noted in the further statement of the 
Committee that a foreign language (presumably without 
discrimination) may be taught in the elementary schools, 
provided the previous requirement in regard to instruction 



438 MY GENERATION 

in the English language is fully complied with. This state- 
ment, though less urgent, is in harmony with the action of 
the ministerial boards of education in France and England 
in the public schools of those countries. The reports of the 
Ministers of Public Education in France and England, 
furnished in response to the request of the Commissioner 
of Public Education in this country, contain much of vital 
importance in their bearing upon the question at issue. 
These ministries positively refuse to eliminate the study 
of German from the public schools, having in mind alike 
the danger from German competition in business and from 
German propaganda. The assertion at this time by the 
United States of any kind of provincialism as a national 
policy would be entirely out of harmony with the policy of 
our Allies, and strangely inconsistent with our own action 
in assuming to lead the way toward a League of Nations 
of world-wide possibilities. 

To complete the statement of views which I have pub- 
licly expressed in regard to events attending and following 
the War, I insert with slight revision the letter written to 
the Dartmouth Alumni of Boston at their last annual 
meeting, in which I attempt to characterize that attitude 
toward participation in the affairs of the world which I 
conceived to be most in harmony with the spirit and 
policy that determined the history of the College. 

OccoM Ridge, Hanover, N.H. 
March 2, 1919 

Edwin A. Bayley, Esq., 

President of Dartmouth Alumni Association of Boston 
My dear Mr. Bayley, 

I have been greatly interested in the programme which you 
arranged for the present Dartmouth Dinner, in which you kindly 
invite me to have a part. My attention was specially arrested 



THE NEW RESERVATION OF TIME 439 

by your injunction, following the impressive list of the auto- 
graphs of Dartmouth men in the service abroad, that we not 
only preserve the traditions of the College, but that we also 
"keep the faith," In asking myself just what the "faith" of 
Dartmouth is, in the keeping of which we may serve the nation 
in the present juncture of affairs, my mind reverted to a crum- 
pled sheet of paper that had been lying for some years in safe- 
keeping in my desk — the original manuscript copy, partly 
in ink and partly in pencil, of Richard Hovey's ode to the 
country on occasion of its venture into the world through the 
Spanish War. The ode bears, as you will recall, the striking title 
of " ?7nmanifest Destiny," and is in itself at once a rebuke to that 
national conceit which was then finding expression in the popular 
doctrine of "manifest destiny," and a plea for faith in the as yet 
" unmanifest destiny " of the country. I quote the closing lines — 

"There is a Hand that binds our deeds 
To mightier issues than we planned; 
Each son that triumphs, each that bleeds. 
My Country, serves its dark command. 

" I do not know beneath what sky. 
Or on what seas shall be thy fate; 
I only know it shall be high, 
I only know it shall be great." 

To any one familiar with the ode, or to any one reading it for 
the first time, it will appear how naturally it rises above the occa- 
sion which called it out and fits itself to the "mightier issues" of 
the present. It will also become evident just what Hovey meant 
by the faith which can give to the nation the sure access to its 
"unmanifest destiny." And we have only to turn to our own 
history to see just how it works. The two great events which we 
commemorate to-night show us that this faith, reduced to prac- 
tical terms, meant both to the founder and to the refounder of 
the College nothing more and nothing less than the power to 
adjust their minds to the greater issues that were to determine 
the fate of the College. That is what it must always mean — the 
power to adjust the mind to the greater issue as it arises. 



440 MY GENERATION 

We accord the founding of Dartmouth to the faith of Eleazar 
Wheelock. What was the supreme exercise of his faith? Dart- 
mouth College as we know it was not in the first intention of 
Wheelock. His first purpose and his long cherished project was 
his Indian School. That was "manifest destiny." For that he 
sent Samson Occom to England; for that he took his own way 
into the northern wilderness. He was then sixty years old, and 
apparently about to realize his lifelong desire, when the scheme 
became impracticable because of its insufficiency. It was then 
that the faith of Wheelock really asserted itself in the power to 
readjust his mind to the new and greater issue which had been 
hidden in the "unmanifest destiny" of his great conception. 
And it was then, because of his undaunted and discerning faith, 
that as the mirage of his Indian School faded away, there rose in 
its place the substantial walls of Dartmouth College. 

The refounding of the College is still more a proof of my defini- 
tion of the historic faith we are enjoined to keep. Why is not 
Dartmouth College to-day a State University? Simply because 
Mr. Webster could not adjust his mind to that conception of its 
destiny. You may say that he could not shrink his mind to that 
conclusion, or you may say that such was the audacity of his 
faith he would not harbor the thought. But the fact remains that 
it was Mr. Webster's obedience to the dictate of his higher na- 
ture, though acting contrary to the general advice of men from 
other colleges in New England, and under protest from some 
who feared to put the charters of their own colleges to a final 
test, that he determined to cast the fortune of his college into 
the lap of the Supreme Court and take the result. We know the 
result. We know that by this mighty venture of his faith, he gave 
to all colleges the lasting security of their chartered rights, and 
to us he gave back in place of an already estabhshed state insti- 
tution a nationalized college, the significance of which return 
becomes more and more apparent as each annual catalogue adds 
to the enrollment of the sons of New Hampshire, the enrollment 
in increasing numbers of the sons of every other state from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific. 

We can hardly fail to remind ourselves, as the keepers of this 



' THE NEW RESERVATION OF TIME 441 

historic faith, that the time may come, may even be at hand, 
which will test our power to adjust our minds to great educa- 
tional issues that may vitally afiPect the College. I say no more 
at this point because of my firm confidence that whenever these 
issues present themselves they will be met with that breadth of 
view, and elevation of purpose, and resolute initiative which 
have already become characteristic of the present administration 
of the College. 

But what of our attitude to the nation, the object of our imme- 
diate and urgent concern? Can we do better than try to apply 
this injunction that we keep the faith in the sense in which I have 
tried to interpret it — as the power to adjust our minds to great 
issues as they arise .f* How constant and imperative has been the 
demand for the use of this power in our recent history. To recur 
to Richard Hovey's figure — with what rapidity have we been 
forced out of the region of our "manifest" into that of our "un- 
manifest destiny." 

For a century we lived in the security and pride of our isola- 
tion. That was our providential assignment among the nations. 
That was our "manifest destiny." It took but so slight a cause 
as the Spanish War to disabuse our minds of that fallacy and 
adjust us to our place in the world. 

Then came our experience of neutrality. That, we tried to 
persuade ourselves as we shrank from the horrors of war, was 
our "manifest destiny." Upon the high authority of our Presi- 
dent we were assured for a time that this was to be our distinc- 
tion. "We are," he said, "a mediating nation — the mediating 
nation of the world." This was a fit conception as applied to our 
internal life, that of mediating among the races and peoples of 
which we are "compounded," but as a theory of our relation to 
the warring nations it soon became unsatisfying, then dishearten- 
ing, and then a burden intolerable to bear, an experience too 
bitter to endure. The day when we disowned our neutrality was 
a day of national emancipation. And to-day the joy with which 
we welcome our returning sons is in part the expression of our 
gratitude for our deliverance at their hands from our abject 
condition, into the community of the suffering but exalted 
nations. 



442 MY GENERATION 

And now we are entering upon another stage in the disclosure 
of our "unmanif est destiny." What part shall the Nation take in 
the use of its sovereignty? Certainly this is a great issue, in the 
minds of many a very grave issue. But it is here, and how shall 
we meet it? I can only answer for myself. I cannot allow myself 
to believe that we shall put such a construction upon the doc- 
trine of sovereignty as will block the way in the further advance 
toward the realization of our "unmanifest destiny." I believe 
rather that "we the people" will allow, and if need be, charge the 
Nation, in the full exercise of its sovereignty, to keep company 
with the great sovereignties of the world in the positive and 
determined effort to maintain the rule of justice, order, and 
peace. If a fellowship with this intent is to exist and we are not 
in and of it, where are we? If it shall not exist because we took 
no sufficient part in creating it, what answer shall we make to 
history for the relapse of the nations by consequence into the 
state of elemental warfare? ^ 

Such is my response, too long and yet too brief, to the injunc- 
tion that we keep the faith — the faith, that is, of the open, the 
courageous, the undistorted, the unconfused mind in the pres- 
ence of great issues as they arise. This is the power as I appre- 
hend, perhaps the greatest gift of our inheritance as it is the 
greatest discipline of our citizenship, through which we as the 
sons of Dartmouth and as loyal citizens of the State are to strive 
to fulfill the "unmanifest destiny" whether of the College or of 
the Nation. 

I am, in the fellowship of our faith 

Most sincerely and heartily 

William Jewett Tucker 

I have recalled these expressions of opinion to mark the 
impression which the moral issues involved in the course of 
events made upon my own mind. Such studies as I was able 
to make in the endeavor to interpret the meaning of the 
new social order, or the meaning of the War, were for the 

^ The portion of this letter referring to the national policy was taken note 
of quite generally in the daily and weekly press. 



THE NEW RESERVATION OF TIME 443 

most part embodied in articles contributed to the "Atlan- 
tic Monthly." I was much indebted to the generous hos- 
pitality of the "Atlantic" in this period of its renaissance 
under the editorship of Mr. Ellery Sedgwick. It gave me 
ready access to its wide constituency — a constituency 
made up largely of those whom I wished to reach. When I 
came to gather up these articles into a book to be issued by 
Houghton Mifflin Company, I was somewhat at a loss for a 
fit title. There was no unity of subject-matter. All that I 
could say of the subject-matter was that the order in which 
the articles appeared showed "the increasing seriousness 
of the subjects which occupied the public mind." On the 
whole, it seemed best to adopt the title of the first article in 
the "Atlantic" series as at least introducing a fresh idea — 
"The New Reservation of Time" — following with the 
sub-title — " And other Articles contributed to the Atlan- 
tic Monthly during the Personal Occupancy of the Period 
described." The "Baltimore Sun," referring to the title, 
said : " This is an example of a good book hidden under the 
bushel of a bad title. No one would know without reading 
a part of the book what the 'new reservation of time' 
meant, and the term would not arouse the most curious 
book-buyer." Not so however the "Nation " and the "New 
Republic," both of which journals caught at once the 
underlying idea and proceeded to comment on it — the 
"Nation" making the title a text for discussing "Our Ex- 
Presidents of Universities," and the "New Republic" for 
discoursing on "Thinking at Seventy-Six." 

The "Nation" (January 11, 1917), after touching with 
neat irony upon the need of a new "leisure class," which 
could not fit^well into the present "leisure class which 
plays polo and exhibits for the photographers of the 



444 MY GENERATION 

Sunday supplement,'* offers our ex-presidents of universi- 
ties as among the candidates well worth considering for the 
place, though distinctions must be made among them as 
they "differ among themselves in goodness, greatness, and 
glory," and then proceeds to a review of the motive and 
of the contents of the book: 

Dr. Tucker's book set out to be an essay towards the solution 
of the problem: How to endure being a retired president. When 
he relinquished active charge of Dartmouth, he fell to considering 
whether the effect of society's creation by retirement of a quite 
elderly leisure class would intensify or remove "the reproach of 
old age." He answered the question in the new and inspiring 
spirit of resistance to superannuation, which makes so many 
men above seventy the admired companions of men in the twen- 
ties. He swiftly concluded that so far as his own case was con- 
cerned, membership in the leisure class was not a discharge from 
responsibility for time, but an admission to larger and freer 
opportunities to use it. His retirement permitted him at last to 
consider a college presidency as an avocation, and to follow what 
is perhaps the highest calling of a man of leisure — to think and 
write disinterestedly for the Republic and the cause of mankind. 

Following an appreciation of the contents of the book, 
the writer reverts to this idea of a leisure class made up as 
suggested, and generalizes upon it in this wise: 

Dr. Tucker is not the only retired university president who 
has in recent years been thinking and writing disinterestedly for 
the Republic and the cause of mankind; but he is perhaps the 
first to recognize his work as the fruit of a new and possibly im- 
portant elderly leisure class. The precious aspects of membership 
in this class are various. Its members need not speak nor write 
except when moved by an inner call : they may therefore be ex- 
pected to purge their utterances of the humdrum official plati- 
tudes of the bad days of their presidencies. They are scholars as 
well as administrators: they may therefore be expected to rise 



THE NEW RESERVATION OF TIME 445 

above the violence of an uncritical partisanship. They are too old 
or too weary or too proud to enter into competition for such 
poHtical honors as might be considered an augmentation of their 
sober academic glories; they may therefore be expected to speak 
weightily and to be heard gravely, as sage and unselfish coun- 
sellors of the national conscience. The class which we have been 
describing is really of quite distinguished morality and intelli- 
gence —it would be a hard class for a vulgar parvenu to enter; 
but it is a small class, and it ought to be enlarged by the acces- 
sion of a few more men who have supped fairly full of honors — 
say the ex-Presidents of the United States. 

The "New Republic" (August 25, 1917) recognized 
equally the underlying idea of "the new reservation of 
time," but found the real significance in the fact that as 
applied to ex-presidents of colleges it gave them intellec- 
tual freedom after their long imprisonment in institution- 
alism. Making the application of this theory concrete, the 
reviewer says that "the impression a young man will get 
from this book is that to be institutionally responsible is to 
be intellectually suppressed and benumbed. Dr. Tucker does 
not say this, but he gives the effect of a mind that has been 
a long time in prison, the implications of his philosophy are 
so radical and yet his thoughts move so stiffly in their har- 
ness"; in proof of which he compares the views expressed 
on educational subjects with those on current social topics. 
"Here is a mind that has a driving radical force about it in 
any direction where it works openly and freely. . . . The 
marvel is to find in this thinker of seventy-six the dynamic 
philosophy which is only just beginning to be felt by young 
men of twenty-four." In proof of which latter statement, 
the reviewer comments in terms of highest approval of the 
views advanced in the chapters on social progress and on 
the War, and then passes to this generalization : 



446 MY GENERATION 

WTiat do we do in this country with minds like this, pregnant, 
radical, profound? Is it not a criminal waste of intellectuality to 
deny freedom to such minds except at the price of superannu- 
ation? Dr. Tucker has all the invaluable resources of the publicist. 
He is the stuff out of which England makes its Morleys and its 
Bryces. His style, though weighty, is distinctive, and could easily 
have been made as porous as Professor Dewey's. But our civiliza- 
tion could apparently find no other way of using such a mind 
than to put it for the best years of its life into the routine of a 
New England college, where the horrifying prestige of the higher 
education kept it in a state of torpor. Somehow at Dartmouth 
Dr. Tucker did not get himself tapped as a pubhc philosopher. 
It is not until he is retired that he shows us in these essays what 
he might have been doing all these years as a publicist free 
lance. If President Tucker could not have had an earlier re- 
lease, we are at least grateful for him now. May the years spare 
him an ever newer reservation of time ! 

This criticism forms a part of a unique literary episode. 
It is signed with the initials R. B. (Randolph Bourne), 
whose recent untimely death is so great a loss to the litera- 
ture of sincere and searching personal opinion. In 1912 Mr. 
Bourne, while still a student at Columbia, appeared on the 
pages of the "Atlantic" in a brilliant essay on "Youth," 
full of freedom and fire. Mr. Sedgwick asked me if I would 
write a response to it — not in any way a reply — giving 
the antithesis of age. As I had already embodied much of 
my thought of age in my article on "The New Reservation 
of Time," I felt that any further word, from me on the sub- 
ject would be superjfluous, and declined. I noticed that the 
antithesis soon appeared in the delightful article by John 
Burroughs on "The Summit of the Years." Some three 
years later, Mr. Bourne wrote an article ("Atlantic," Sep- 
tember, 1915) on "This Older Generation," foreshadowed 
in degree by his article on "Youth," in which he charges 



THE NEW RESERVATION OF TIME 447 

that this generation of the elders has grown obstructive 
through its compromises and conventions, that it had 
failed to supply guides and leaders, and above all that it 
vhad grown "weary of thinking." To this indictment. Dr. 
Francis G. Peabody replied with admirable temper and 
good-humor, showing the futility of discussing too seriously 
the provinces of adjacent generations, but bringing out in 
sharp relief some of the characteristics of "This Younger 
Generation" ("Atlantic," December, 1915). At the close 
of this article Dr. Peabody, in answering the despairing 
question of Mr. Bourne — "Where are the leaders of the 
elder generation who are rallying about them the disinte- 
grated members of idealistic youth.'*" — made reference to 
the fact that " Mr. Roosevelt was now several times a grand- 
father," and added, "or if still further any reader of the 
* Atlantic' would observe how completely without age 
limit is the capacity to read the signs of the present times, 
let him turn back from Mr. Bourne's essay to the first ar- 
ticle in the same number ('The Progress of the Social Con- 
science') and read the wise and far-sighted anticipations 
of an invalided veteran of letters, with their background of 
sound learning and their calm prophecy of a ' revival of civ- 
ilization.' " I do not know that this paragraph caught the 
eye of Mr. Bourne, or if so, suggested to him the opportu- 
nity of making his amende honorable to the generation, 
which he had accused of " having grown weary of thinking,'* 
through his very generous appreciation, in his review of 
"The New Reservation of Time," of one of their number 
as a "thinker of seventy-six whose dynamic philosophy is 
just beginning to be felt by young men of twenty-four.'* 
In the light of this possible "amende" it seems almost un- 
generous to call attention to the inconsistency of accounting 



448 MY GENERATION 

for this storage of power during a long period of imprison- 
ment in academic institutionalism, or to revert to another 
figure employed by the reviewer, to show how the "prison 
chill" could produce a "second blooming." However, Mr. 
Robert A. Woods, Head of the South End House, Boston, 
whose knowledge of previous facts was both intimate and 
critical, writing in the columns of the Social Settler ("Bos- 
ton Evening Transcript, " August 30, 1917), deftly relieved 
Mr. Bourne of the necessity of explaining the inconsist- 
ency by exploding the myth of "institutionalism." And 
so this interesting episode was happily concluded. 

In defining at the outset the nature of this Autobio- 
graphical Interpretation, I remarked that its value would 
depend upon the relation of my personal career to the for- 
tune of my generation. If the movements with which I 
was identified were born out of the spirit of the generation, 
and if in my connection with these movements I also was 
imbued with its spirit, then I might hope to write as an 
interpreter rather than as a mere observer. The amount 
of ground covered by any or all personal activities would 
be relatively of less importance than a just appreciation 
of the spirit which alone could give them meaning and 
effect. But the spirit as well as the work of my gener- 
ation has now passed into the secondary stage of interpre- 
tation. It is no longer to be studied and interpreted pri- 
marily with a view to service. The generation has said its 
word and accomplished or failed to accomplish its task. 
The War, while it lasted, was so inclusive and so insistent 
in its demands that it reached back among the men of my 
time to take account of their accumulated experiences as 
well as of their material possessions. What is now needed 
is not some past experience of the world, but a new spirit. 




IN RETIREMENT 



THE NEW RESERVATION OF TIME 449 

a new mind to be created out of its own aspirations, 
enthusiasms, responsibilities, hopes, fears, determinations, 
even out of the very chaos with which the War has seemed 
to plunge the mind of the nations. 

Let me draw the contrast. The ruling idea, the domi- 
nating purpose, the passionate aim of my generation from 
first to last was progress. That one word explains its ener- 
gies physical and moral, and its achievements, its mis- 
takes also and its failures. The ruling idea, the dominat- 
ing purpose, the passionate aim of the incoming generation 
must of necessity be peace — not peace as rest from the 
weariness of war, or even as recuperation from its awful 
losses; nor yet a peace satisfied with the dethronement of 
militarism or with the punishment and restraint of un- 
humbled and unrepentant peoples, but with peace as the 
commanding problem before the mind and conscience of 
all peoples, a problem having its only possible solution in 
the establishment and maintenance of the moral equilib- 
rium of the world, the only balance of power which can be 
registered on the scales of justice. Evidently this object 
must be as far-reaching in time as in extent. Peace must 
be the world's business, its great business, for at least a 
generation. Any computation of the elements of a lasting, 
or really durable peace, must include vastly more of civil- 
ization, an adequate advance in the sense of justice, and 
the deepening of the process of humanizing the world. 
Any international court of justice must be supported and 
made practicable by continuous international legislation. 
Law, that is, must be superseded by better law and applied 
by better methods. So much our wiser men are beginning 
to foresee and to declare. But is this all.? What shall 
prevent the spirit of war, once exorcised from the nations, 



450 



MY GENERATION 



from returning through the open door of class conscious- 
ness, enmity, and strife? Must the war of the nations be 
followed by the more terrible war of the classes? Who 
shall insure peace in the workshop and the market-place? 
How shall democracy be restated and reenacted in terms 
of economic justice? Surely the problems of peace can be 
no less absorbing, no less perplexing, than were the incite- 
ments and demands of progress. 

Is there any word which the nineteenth century, as the 
century of progress, may utter in the ear of the twentieth 
century, as the century committed to the task of peace? 
There is one word which I believe it may utter without 
impertinence — patience. Soon or late, patience is seen 
to be the indispensable quality in the adjustment of hu- 
man effort to the time element in the work of God in 
human affairs, "Forget not this one thing," said the 
Apostle Peter to the men of his generation, "one day with 
the Lord is as a thousand years and a thousand years as 
one day." How singularly applicable to the slow years 
of the War and to its swift conclusion ! What if the War 
had ended before the Russian autocracy had fallen out of 
alliance with the liberty-loving peoples of the Entente; 
what if the War had ended while Turkey might have been 
saved by skillful diplomacy from permanent banishment 
from Europe : what if the War had ended before America 
had quickened her step to reach the battle-field at the 
critical hour? These are pertinent questions to ask our- 
selves as we turn from the issues of the War to the prob- 
lems of peace. The problems of peace are already in evi- 
dence. They are growing more complicated and more 
serious. We cannot evade them, and we may not mini- 
mize them. Neither may we make light of the dissensions 



THE NEW RESERVATION OF TIME 451 

that have arisen or that may arise out of them. "Never- 
theless," shall we not say in like patient faith with that 
of the Apostle, as in his time he faced the obstacles to the 
incoming of the New Order of the World, "Nevertheless, 
according to His promise we look for a new earth wherein 
dwelleth righteousness." 



THE END 



INDEX 



Abbot, Samuel, 103. 

Abbott, Dr. Lyman, his conception of 
the divinity of Christ, 131, 132; at 
Plymouth Church celebration, 370. 

Academies before the Civil War, 30, 31. 

Adams, Professor C. D., 317. 

Adams, Melvin O., 321. 

Adams, Dr. William, 73-75. 

Agnosticism, 6, 94. 

Alabama, the. See Kearsarge. 

Alderman, Dr., 19. 

Allen, Archdeacon, 54. 

Allen, Ethan, 375. 

Allen, Justice, 207, 208. 

"Alumni Movement," the, at Dart- 
mouth, 234-36. 

Alumni Oval, the, 321. 

American Board of Missions, 144, 145, 
152-58. 

American Home Missionary Society, 
the, 63. 

Americanization, work in, 436-38. 

Amos Tuck School of Administration 
and Finance, 321, 354-58. 

Andover Controversy, the, out of place, 
101 ; due in large measure to personal 
influence, 101, 102; the Board of 
Trustees and the Board of Visitors 
at the time of, 104, 105; election of 
Dr.Smyth, 105, 106; letter from mem- 
ber of staff of " Congregationalist " 
opposing Dr. Smyth's appointment, 
107; effort of the "Congregational- 
ist" to establish the theory of con- 
structive heresy, 108-10; letter of the 
Faculty, 110, 111; conversation of 
Tucker with Smyth, 111, 112; letters 
concerning Smyth, 112-14; Smyth 
rejected by the Visitors, 114-16; 
effect of the decision on the public 
mind, 117-20; the Faculty of the 
Academy during, 124; distinction 
between "Andover Disturbance" 
and "Andover Controversy," 125; 
the early period a period of restraint, 
126. 

Andover Creed, the, 121, 122, 185- 
221; Professor Smyth's defense of, 
200, 216. See Andover Trial. 



Andover House (South End House), 
131, 181-83, 231, 367, 426. 

Andover Movement, the, 128; ex- 
pounded in the pulpit, 129; its rela- 
tion to Unitarianism, 131-35; and 
the churches, 151. 

"Andover Review," institution of, 136; 
contributors to, 137, 138; members 
of the Andover Review Company, 
Inc., 138; indebtedness to publishers 
of, 138, 139; press notices of, 139 «.; 
importance of editorials of, 139-46; 
the purpose of, 140-42; personal re- 
lations of the editors of, 146; the 
editors, 146-50; courses offered 
through, 174-77. 

Andover Theological Seminary, a the- 
ological school with a missionary 
spirit, 55; Professors in, 55-57; in- 
tellectual and moral passion lacking 
in, 58; Tucker accepts call to, 86-89; 
its attempt to Christianize the doc- 
trine of human destiny, 99; the con- 
stitution of, 102-04; new chair in, 
offered to Newman Smyth, 118, 119; 
Dr. Harris appointed to chair in, 
120, 121; resignation of Professors 
Thayer and Mead from, 121, 122; 
creed subscription, 121-23; the Fac- 
ulty of, during the Controversy, 
124; two new chairs established in, 
124; status of, at the close of the pre- 
liminary stage in the controversy, 
124, 125; the Faculty a preaching 
Faculty, 129; spirit of work within, 
during the controversy, 159, 184, 
185; controversy without effect on 
students, 160; exceptional interest of 
the work of, 160; the Lectureship on 
Pastoral Theology, 161 ; the chair of 
Preaching in, 162; preaching by 
students at, 163, 164; lectures on 
the technique of teaching at, 163-65; 
scheme of lectures given at, 170-72; 
Social Economics in, 172-74; ex- 
tension courses in, 174-77; Tucker 
resigns from, 240; period of institu- 
tional development of, delayed, 244, 
245; decline in numbers, 245; re- 



454 



INDEX 



moval to Cambridge, 245-47; cre- 
ation of separate Board for, 246. 

"Andover Townsman," editorial in, 
on Professor Tucker's removal to 
Dartmouth, 239 n. 

Andover Trial, the, the charges, 185- 
90; the reply of the Professors to the 
charges, 191-93; Professor Smyth's 
answer to the request to meet the 
charges in writing, 193; the Amended 
Complaint, 194, 195; the issue, 195- 
97; the counsel, 197; the scene of, 
198; the interest excited by, 198; 
absence of students and Trustees 
from, 198; the arguments, 198-202; 
result of, 203, 204; appeal to Supreme 
Court of Massachusetts made by 
Professor Smyth, 205; bill of com- 
plaint made by the Trustees, 205-07; 
verdict of Visitors set aside by Su- 
preme Court, 208; changes in the 
Board of Visitors, 209, 210; com- 
plaint against Professor Smyth re- 
newed, 211; case dismissed, 212, 213, 
233, 234; summary of the case, 213; 
result a personal triumph for Pro- 
fessor Smyth, 214, 215; folly of over- 
use of theological safeguards shown 
by, 216, 217; theological freedom 
assured by, 217, 218; contributed 
toward the freedom of Christianity, 
219-21. 

Arnold, Matthew, 81. 

Asakawa, Professor, 346, 347. 

Associated Charities, 172. 

Athletics, college, 39, 332-35; at Dart- 
mouth, 335, 336. 

Avocation, value of, 392. 

Baldwin, Professor Simeon E., 197, 199. 

Balfour, Arthur, quoted on the change 
in the point of view of the nineteenth 
century, 3. 

Bancroft, Cecil F. P., 55, 104, 301. 

Barker, Justice, 208. 

Bartlett, Ichabod, 288. 

Bartlett, Samuel C, 66 n., 310; Presi- 
dent of Dartmouth, 65; resignation, 
222; sympathies and activities of, 
351. 

Beecher, Henry Ward, 73, 332, 370. 

Bell, Mrs., 396. 

Bellows, Dr. Henry W., 73. 

Berkeley Street Church, Boston, 154- 
56. 

Berkeley Temple, 169. 

Berry, Rev. Dr. Charles A., 370. 



Bevan, Dr. Llewelj-n D., 73. 

Bible, historical criticism of, 6, 94-96; 

experiment in the constructive study 

of, 67-69. 
Biology as a study, 337. 
Bishop, Robert R., 104. 
Bishop, Judge, 207, 238, 239. 
Blair, Ex-Senator, 25. 
Boards of control of colleges, 261. 
Boards of trust and colleges, 265. 
Bolshevism, 17. 
Boston and New York, the religious 

atmosphere of, in 1875, compared, 

72. 
Boston Latin School, 31. 
Bourne, Randolph, 446-48. 
Bovhood in a New England village, 

26-30. 
Bradford, Dr., 370. 
Brayton, Miss, 401. 
Brooke, Stopford A., his "Life and 

Letters of Frederick W. Robertson," 

58. 
Brown, Charlotte Rogers, 415 n. 
Brown, Eleanor, 415 n. 
Brown, Rev. Francis, President of 

Dartmouth, 287, 292-95. 
Brown, Professor Francis, grandson of 

the Rev. Francis, 236, 237, 399. 
Brown, John Crosby, 74. 
Brown, Judge Nelson Pierce, 415 n. 
Brown, Mrs. N. P. (Margaret Tucker), 

230, 415. 
Bro^Ti, Nelson Pierce, Jr., 415 n. 
BrowTi, Professor Samuel G., 236, 237, 

366. 
Brown, Stanton, 415 n. 
Burroughs, John, 446. 
Bushnell, Horace, on work and play, 

394. 
Butterfield, Dr. Ralph, fund given to 

Dartmouth by, 304. 

Cable, the Atlantic, 78, 79. 

Cabot, Dr. Richard C, letter of, 366, 

367. 
Capital and labor, changes in, after the 

Civil War, 14, 15. 
Carnegie, Andrew, 178-80. 
Carnegie Pension Fund, 265, 266. 
Carter, President Franklin, 105. 
Cass, Mr., 27. 
Caverno, Rev. Dr. Charles C, incident 

regarding "Origin of Species" told 

bv, 3. 
Chalmers, Rev. Thomas, 385. 
Chapel, College, 345. 



INDEX 



455 



Charity, 172, 173. 

Chase, Charles P., 311. 

Chase, his "History of Dartmouth" 

quoted, 275, 376. 
Cheever, Charlotte, wife of Professor 

Tucker, 230. 
Cheever, Dr. Henry T., 230. 
Cheever, Miss, 396. 
Cheney, Governor, 86. 
Chi Alpha, New York club, 81-83. 
Chicago, University of, endowment, 

263. 
"Chicago Times," the, suspension of, 

unwise, 45. 
Choate, Rufus, 294, 396. 
Christ, the new orthodox and the Uni- 
tarian views of, 131-35. 
Christian faith, 220, 221. 
Christianity, freedom of, 219. 
Church, the, 17; and charity, 172; 

and social economy, 173. 
Churches, New York, 84-86. 
Churchill, Professor John Wesley, 124; 

personal sketch of, 149, 150. 
Citizenship, Tucker's views on, 391. 
Civil War, the, 8, 9, 11; moral relapse 
following, 12, 13; commemorative 
tablet at Dartmouth to students and 
graduates who fell in, 41; not un- 
foreseen, 42; nation unready for, 43; 
popular impatience at beginning of, 
43; disappointment in commanding 
generals in early part of, 43, 44; 
political situation in, 44, 45 ; the issue 
of personal rights versus national 
safety, 45, 46; premature movement 
for peace, 46-48; carried on with a 
heavy heart in the North, 51; satis- 
faction at successful completion of, 
52; characteristics of the era which 
followed, 52, 53. 
Civilization, on the control of modern, 

431, 432. 
Clarke, Henry Steele, 65. 
Clarke, James Freeman, 138. 
Classical college, the accomplishment 

of the, 37, 38. 
Coit, Charlie, 22. 
Collective bargaining, 15. 
College Hall, Dartmouth, 332. 
College presidency, 362-64, 392, 403; 

emeritus, 420. 
Colleges, before the Civil War, 30; uni- 
formity among, 31; curriculum of, 
32, 33; competition in scholarship 
fostered by curriculum of, 33; pre- 
dominance of personal element in 



teaching in, 83; numerical equality 
in, 34; educational aristocracy among 
graduates of, 34 ; the freedom of, 36 ; 
routine and the elective system, 36, 
37; the classical training of, 37, 38; 
the earlier and the modern, distinc- 
tion between, 38; significance of the 
present tendencies in, 39 n.; "college 
life," 39; comradeship in, 39, 40; 
corporate consciousness of, 249-71; 
the institutional character of, 249, 
250; have spiritual value, 250; mean- 
ing of the phrase "corporate con- 
sciousness" as applied to, 250, 251; 
from address of Woodrow Wilson on, 
252; criticism of educational spirit 
of, 253, 257-66; humanizing and in- 
dividualizing in, 253-55; corporate 
spirit a stimulus to scholarship in, 
255-57; governing bodies, 260-62; 
faculty responsibility, 261, 262; non- 
sectarianism of, 262, 263; endow- 
ments of, 263, 264; danger of cap- 
italization of, 264; tendency to trans- 
form governing boards of, into finan- 
cial boards, 264, 265; educational 
boards of trust in, 265, 266; tempta- 
tion to insufficient or inferior use of, 
266, 267; relation of, to the past, 267; 
prominence of teaching force in, in 
nineteenth century, 297 ; administra- 
tion prominent in the modern, 297, 
298; the modernizing process in, 297- 
300; historic, the proper financial 
policy of, 302, 303; change in occu- 
pations of graduates of, 353, 354; 
humanizing function of liberal edu- 
cation of, 359, 360; relation between 
professional and executive conception 
of administration of, 404, 405. 

Collins, Charles, 76. 

Columbia University, endowment of, 
264. 

Comradeship, college, 39, 40. 

Concord Reformatory, 169. 

Congregational churches, examination 
of candidates for pastorates of, 151. 

Congregationalism and Presbyterian- 
ism, 72. 

"Congregationalist," the, 107-10, 210. 

Conscription, 425. 

Constantinople, 393. 

Cook, Joseph, 55, 126. 

Cooperation as a factor in evolution, 93. 

Corporate consciousness, 249-71 ; 
meaning of the phrase as applied to 
colleges, 250, 251. 



456 



INDEX 



Corporations, 15. 

Corruption following the Civil War, 
12. 

Covel, W. J., 157. 

Craig, O. H. P. (Captain Craig), 26. 

Creed subscription, 121-23. 

Crosby, Dr. Howard, 73. 

Crosby, Dr. and Mrs. Josiah, 66 n. 

Cummings, Uncle and Aunt Noah, 26. 

Curriculum, of colleges before the Civil 
War, 31-33; the modern and the old- 
time, 38; significance of the present 
changes in, 39 n. 

Cushwa, Charlotte Cheever, 415 n. 

Cushwa, Professor Frank William, 
415 n. 

Cushwa! Mrs. F. W. (Elizabeth Wash- 
burn Tucker), 230, 415 n. 

Cushwa, William Tucker, 415 n. 

Dale, Dr., 81. 

Dartmouth, Lord, 274, 276. 

Dartmouth, Lord, the present, 276-78, 
289 n. 

Dartmouth College, Indian School pre- 
cursor of, 23, 272; its history to be 
capitalized, 269; college sentiment 
to be fostered, 269, 270; question of 
facilities, 270, 271; the traditions of, 
271-96; a religious venture into an 
untried field of education, 272; re- 
founding of, 272, 273; the romance 
of, 275, 276; foundation of, 275, 276; 
and the present Lord Dartmouth, 
276-78; Tucker elected to Presidency 
of, 222; considerations for and against 
acceptance of Presidency, 222-25, 
237; letter of declination, 225-28; 
the "Alumni Movement," 234-36; 
Tucker decides to accept Presidency 
of, 238; the proper institutional de- 
velopment of, 268, 269; the Wheelock 
Succession, 280-83; occasion of re- 
founding of, 283-85; charges and 
counter-charges, 285, 286; President 
deposed, 287; act of Legislatm-e rela- 
tive to, 287; suit and adverse de- 
cision, 287, 288; character of its 
graduates, 296, 297; the modernizing 
process at, 300; management of, 300, 
301; contraction of, 301, 302; finan- 
cial policy of, 302, 303; funds of, 303- 
08; independent heating and lighting 
system of, 306; the plant of, 307-09 
the physical expansion of, 309-12 
architectural development of, 312 
superintendence of construction at. 



312, 313; educational expansion of, 
313-15; changes in professional 
habits at, 315, 316; committee sys- 
tem introduced into the Faculty, 
316; cooperation of Faculty in re- 
construction of, 316, 317; distribu- 
tion of, 317, 318; benefactions of 
Edward Tuck to, 319-21; cooper- 
ation of alumni, 321, 322; normal 
capacity of, 323; immediate effect of 
modernizing process on internal life 
of, 323, 324; cooperation of students 
used in reconstruction, 324-29; the 
elective system in, 324, 336-39; 
"Dartmouth night," 325, 326; 
"horning" and college sentiment, 
326-29; introduction of the bath, 
330; prejudice against the modern 
dormitory at, 330, 331 ; the dormitory 
system at, 331 , 332; athletics at, 335, 
336; and the University idea, 349- 
53; the Thayer School, 351, 358, 
359; Amos Tuck School of Adminis- 
tration and Finance, 354-58; lecture- 
ships established by Henry L. Moore, 
361, 362; and the State of New 
Hampshire, 373-77; Tucker's letter 
of resignation from Presidency of, 
397, 398; during the time of contin- 
ued service of President Tucker, 402; 
need of academic productivity in, 
403; scholarships and fellowships at, 
403; incident touching relation of • 
professional and executive concep- 
tion of administration of, 404, 405; 
question of pension system at, 405, 
406; Sabbatical year at, 406; elec- 
tion of Dr. Nichols to Presidency of, 
408; speech of President Tucker at 
Alumni Dinner of, 409-13. 

Dartmouth Hall, 312, 353. 

"Dartmouth Night," 325, 326. 

Darwin, Charles, publication of hia 
"Origin of Species," 2; publication 
of his "The Descent of Man," 3; 
casual manner of introduction of the 
"Origin of Species," 3; influence of 
the "Origin of Species," 3. 

Degrees, academic, 363. 

Democracy, 15, 17, 426; conventions of, 
329. 

Denison, John H., 55. 

Department store, the, 15. 

Dexter, Henry M., 65; letter of, to the 
"Transcript," 195, 196; argument of, 
at the Andover Trial, 199; death, 209, 
210. 



INDEX 



457 



Dexter, Miss, 401. 

Dickens, Charles, 81. 

Dickinson, Dr. Charles A., 155, 169. 

Dike, Samuel W., 54. 

Discipline, 1. 

Disraeli, Benjamin, 3. 

"Divinity of Christ, The," 143. 

Dix, Dr. Morgan, 73. 

Dixon, Caroline Moorhouse, 415. 

Dixon, Professor Frank Haigh, 317, 

415 n. 
Dixon, Mrs. F. H. (Alice Lester 

Tucker), 230, 415 Ji. 
Dixon, Roger Coit, 415 n. 
Dixon, William Tucker, 415 n. 
Dodge, William E., 74. 
Dodge, William E., Jr., 72, 74. 
Dogmas, 219. 
Dormitories at Dartmouth, 308, 330- 

32. 
Dow, Professor L. H., 317. 
Dunning, Dr., 210. 
Duryea, Dr., 72, 116. 
Dwight, Judge Theodore W., 197, 199. 

Eastman, Professor John Robie, 301. 

Economic crusades, originate in the 
West, 13. 

Economic progress, 423. 

Education, effect of scientific revolu- 
tion of nineteenth century on, 6, 7; 
liberal, humanizing function of, 359, 
360. 

Elective system, the, 36, 37, 324, 336- 
39. 

Eliot, Charles, 309. 

Emeritus, the term, 420. 

Emerson, Professor, 315. 

Emery, Professor F. B., 317. 

Endowments of colleges and univer- 
sities, 263, 264. 

England, study of German language in, 
438. 

English language, study of, 437, 438. 

Equality and liberty, 423. 

Eustis, Rev. Dr. William T., his part 
in the Andover Trial, 105, 186, 193, 
203-10. 

Evil and good, 93. 

Evolution, cooperation as a factor in, 
93. 

Faculty responsibility, 261, 262. 
Fairfield, Arthur P., 313. 
Farrar, Canon, 81. 
Fayerweather, Daniel B., 305. 
Fayerweather Fund, the, 305. 



Fenn, William H., 66. 

Field, Chief Justice, 208. 

Field, Cyrus W., 78, 79. 

Fiske, Daniel T., 104. 

Fitchburg, Mass., sermon delivered by 

Tucker at, 126-28. 
Foster, Professor H. D., 268, 317. 
France, study of German language in, 

438. _ 
Franklin Street Church, Manchester, 

N.H., Tucker's pastorate of, 64-71; 

Semi-Centennial, 66 n., 68; social 

expansion of, 69, 70; the building, 

70. 
Fraternities, college, 332. 
French, Judge Asa, 197, 199. 

Gaston, Ex-Governor, 197. 

Generation, Tucker's, character of, 1; 
fortune of, 1-18; purpose of, 2, 449; 
moral heritage of, 7; the incoming, 
449-51. 

German language, the study of, 434-38. 

Germany, the mind of, 434. 

Gilman, Gov. John Taylor, 376. 

Gladden, Washington, 99, 370. 

Gladstone, W. E., 178, 179. 

Glezen, Mr., 167. 

God, change in conception of, 92. 

Good and evil, 93. 

Gordon, Dr., 370; on the modern or- 
thodox view of Christ, 131, 133. 

Gospel of Wealth, 178-80. 

Graduate school, a contribution of the 
scientific method, 7. 

Grant, U. S., a man of peace, 51. 

Gray, Professor, 207. 

Greeley, Horace, his letter in the " New 
York Tribune," 8; lu-gent for im- 
mediate peace, 46. 

Greene, Dr., 156. 

Gregory, James C, 183. 

Greynook, Nantucket, 401, 402. 

Grimm, Professor H., 233. 

Griswold, Conn., birthplace of Tucker, 
20. 

Grouard, Dr., 401. 

Gulliver, John P., 124. 

Hall, Dr. John, 73. 

Hanover, N.H., 416. 

Hanover Street Church, Manchester, 

N.H., 65. 
Hardy, Alpheus, 104, 153. 
Hardy, Alpheus H., 104. 
Hardy, Professor Arthur Sherburne, 

330, 415. 



458 



INDEX 



Harris, Dr., United States Commis- 
sioner of Education, 30, 296. 

Harris, Professor George, appointed to 
chair at Andover, 120, 121; personal 
sketch of, 147; cooperates in prepa- 
ration of hymn book, 166, 167; form 
in which he accepted the Andover 
Creed, 202; testimony of, at the 
Andover Trial, 202. 

Harvard University, endowment of, 
263; Tucker as preacher at, 367, 368. 

Haynes, Tilly, 198. 

High schools, public, in 1860, 30, 31. 

Hilton, H. H., 322, 372. 

Hincks, Dr. Edward Y., 124; personal 
sketch of, 148, 149. 

Historical criticism of the Bible, 94-96. 

History as a study, 337. 

Hitchcock, Mrs. Hiram, 311. 

Hitchcock, Roswell D., 74, 76, 80, 81. 

Hoar, Judge Rockwood, 196, 197, 199, 
216. 

Hoar, Senator, quoted on the Harvard 
curriculum, 31. 

Holmes, Justice, 208. 

Home, education of, in a New England 
village, 28-30; the Puritan, 30. 

Homiletics, scheme of lectures in, 170. 

Hopkins, President of Dartmouth, 321, 
363, 402; quoted on founding of lec- 
tureships at Dartmouth, 360-62; his 
presidency, 421. 

Hopkins, Ernest M., 319. 

Hopkins, President Mark, 153. 

Hopkinson, Judge, 289. 

"Horning," 326-29. 

Hough, Charles M., letter to Tucker, 
430. 

Houghton, Mr. (Houghton, MiflBin & 
Co.), 138. 

Howells, Mr., 396. 

Hunter, E. H., 313. 

Huxley, T. H., 368, 369. 

Hyde, William De Witt, 318; letter to 
Tucker on Newman Smyth, 112 n.; 
and the Maine Band, 183. 

"Hymns of the Faith," 167, 168. 

Individualism, 14, 16, 17, 97, 98. 
Industrialism, 14, 15, 437; the theory 

of, 394. 
Initiative, intellectual, 1. 
Institutionalism in colleges, 260-66. 
Intellectualism in colleges, 259. 

James, D. Willis, 74. 

Jewett, Rev. William R., 22; Tucker 



taken into the household of, 24; his 

character, 29; death, 229. 
Jewett, Mrs., death, 229. 
Jewett City, 21. 
Johns Hopkins, inaugurated epoch of 

graduate instruction, 7; endowment 

of, 263. 
Johnston, Governor, 380. 
Johnston, John Taylor, 74. 
Jowett, Dr., 340, 345. 

Kearsarge, U.S.S., and U.S.S. Alabama, 
presentation to, of Memorial Tab- 
lets by the State, 378-84. 

Kellogg, Professor Vernon, quoted, 93. 

Keyes, Professor, 313. 

Kimball, Benjamin A., 301. 

King's Chapel, Boston, 134. 

Kingsford, Dr., 309. 

Knowlton, Justice, 208. 

Labor and capital, changes in, after the 
Civil War, 14, 15. 

Lacondaire, quoted, 135. 

Lake, Dr. Kirsopp, 250, 251, 257. 

Land and Water Power Company, 
Manchester, N.H., 64. 

Lane, George W., 74, 75, 86. 

Lanphear, Dr., 211. 

Lathrop, Justice, 208. 

Law School at Dartmouth, 351, 352. 

"Laying of the Corner Stone of the 
New Dartmouth Hall," 289 n. 

League of Nations, Tucker's attitude 
toward, 438-42. 

Learned, Bela, 22. 

Leathes, Stanley, quoted, 16. 

Leavens, Kirk, 22. 

Lecky, W. E. H., quoted, 273, 274. 

Lecture platform, the, 9, 10. 

Lectureship on Pastoral Theology at 
Andover, 161, 169-72. 

Legge, Edward, 277. 

Legge, William Heneage, 277. 

Legge, William Walter, 277. 

Leisure class, 443, 444. 

Leland Stanford University, 263. 

Liberty and equality, 423. 

Libraries, college, 32. 

Lincoln, President, his reply to Horace 
Greeley's letter, 8; as an orator, 10; A 
the return to, in the present war, 10, f | 
11; his second inaugural quoted, 11; 
his analysis of democratic govern- 
ment, 15, 16; his decisive statement 
of the terms of peace, 46; feeling to- 
ward, 47; sees little prospect of his 



INDEX 



459 



reelection, 47; his view of the Civil 

War, 51. 
Lord, Professor John K., 318, 350, 402. 
Lowell, President, 341. 
Lowell Institute lectures, 232, 364-66. 
Lyceums, 10. 
Lyman, Arthur T., 133, 134. 

Macaulay, T. B., 364. 

Madison Square, N.Y., 75. 

Madison Square Church, the, Tucker 
called to, 71; organization and 
growth of, 74, 75; consolidated with 
other churches, 85, 86. 

Maine Band, the, 183, 184. 

Manchester, N.H., character of, 64, 65; 
the churches of, 65, 66; the pastorate 
of Tucker at, 66-71. 

Manchester Locomotive Works, the, 
65. 

Manning, Cardinal, 179. 

Mansfield College, England, 245. 

Marsh, George P., 294. 

Marsh, Joseph, 375. 

Marsh, President of the University of 
Vermont, 138. 

Marshall, Jonathan, 105, 203, 209. 

Mason, Jeremiah, 25, 286, 288. 

McKenzie, Rev. Dr. Alexander, 104. 

McKenzie, A. A., 313. 

Mead, Professor, 121, 122. 

Medical school at Dartmouth, 352. 

Merrill, James G., 54. 

Merriman, Dr. William E., 155. 

Merwin, Sam, 22. 

Militarism, 427. 

Miller, Judge, 45. 

Ministry, the, colleges as training school 
for, 31; the personal element in, 54; 
wider interpretation of the call to, 
54, 55; the question of the pastoral 
and the educational branches of 
service in, 87. 

Missions, "cut the nerve of missions," 
109, 144, 153; city, 130; motive for, 
144, 220; the American Board of 
Missions, 144, 153-58. 

"Modernism," attitude of the churches 
toward, 90. 

Moore, Professor George Foot, 124, 
137, 148. 

Moore, Henry L., lectureships estab- 
lished by, 361, 362. 
Morley, John, quoted on the tenden- 
cies of modern education, 37. 
Morley, John H., 55. 
Morton, Justice, 208. 



Munger, Theodore T., 99. 
Music in church services, 166-69. 

Nantucket, 400, 401. 

"Nation," the, on Dr. Tucker's book, 
"The New Reservation of Time," 
443, 444. 

Nationality, spirit of, and the slavery 
issue, 8-12. 

"New departure," 125. 

New England Breeders' Club, 384-88. 

New Hampshire and Dartmouth, con- 
nection of, 373-77. 

New Hampshire College of Agriculture 
and the Mechanic Arts, 351. 

"New Puritanism, The," 370. 

"New Republic," on Dr. Tucker's 
book, "The New Reservation of 
Time," 445, 446. 

"New Reservation of Time, The," the 
title, 443-48. 

New York and Boston, the religious 
atmosphere of , in 1875, compared, 72. 

New York pastorate, limitations in, 
82-86. 

Nichols, President Ernest Fox, in- 
auguration of, 280, 282; Professor in 
Physics, 317; and "Dartmouth 
Night," 326; accepts presidency of 
Dartmouth, 408; reception to, 409; 
support given to, 420; resignation, 
421. 

Niles, Edward C, 386. 

Noble, Dr., 158 n. 

Northern Academy, the, 350. 

Norwich, Conn., early home of Tucker, 
20, 21; description of, 22, 23. 

Noyes, William H., the ease of, 154-58. 

Occom, Samson, 23, 274, 275. 
Olcott, Colonel, 375. 
Ordronaux, Dr. John, 331. 
Ormiston, Dr. William, 73. 

Pacific Theological Seminary, Tucker 
lectures at, 369. 

Palaeopitus, Dartmouth society, 329. 

Palmer, Professor George H., 55, 135, 
368. 

Park, Professor Edwards A., Professor 
of Christian Theology, 55; theology 
as treated by, 55, 56; resignation of, 
105; witticism of, 166; death, 209, 
210. 

Parker, Dr.. 81. 

Parker, Chief Justice Joel, 310, 351. 

Farkhurst, Dr., 84. 



460 



INDEX 



Pastoral Theology, lectures on, 161, 
169-72. 

Patience, 450, 451. 

Patten, Professor William, 93, 317, 338. 

Payne, Judge, 375. 

Peabody, Professor Francis G., quoted, 
347-49; at Dartmouth, 368; his reply 
to an article of Mr. Bourne, 447. 

Peace, prematiire movement for, in the 
Civil War, 46; moral and selfish, 430, 
431; the aim of the incoming gener- 
ation, 449; the problems of, 450, 451. 

Peaslee, Dr. Edmund R., 86. 

Pension funds, 266. 

Pension system in colleges, 405, 406. 

Personal rights versus national safety, 
45, 46. 

Phelps, Professor Austin, 56, 57. 

Phi Beta Kappa Oration, 232, 233. 

Phillips, John, 103. 

Phillips, Phoebe, 103. 

Phillips, Wendell, 10. 

Phillips Academy, 102. 

Pilgrim Church, St. Louis, 71. 

Pillsburv, Att.-Gen. A. E., 378. 

Play and work, 394, 395. 

Plymouth, N.H., Tucker removed to, 
24, 25; character of, 25; life at, 26- 
30. 

Plymouth Church celebration, 370. 

Political effects of the change in the 
social order, 15, 16. 

Politics, tone of, after the Civil War, 
12, 13; Tucker's views on, 389-91. 

Pollens, Professor, 317. 

Pope, the, his proposal for intervention, 
432, 433. 

Porter, Judge John K., 76, 77. 

Potter, Dr., 73. 

Pratt, Mrs., 396. 

Preaching, the chair of, at Andover, 
162; Tucker's lectures on, delivered 
at Yale, 162, 163; by students, 163, 
164; lectures on the technique of, 163- 
65 ; has to do with the personality of 
the teacher, 164; methods of, 165; 
scheme of lectures on, 170-72. 

Prentiss, George L., 74. 

Presbyterianism and Congregational- 
ism, 72. 

Presidency, college, 362-64, 392, 403; 
emeritus, 420. 

Pritchett, Dr., 266. 

Professional schools, 349-53. 

Professions, work and play in, 394, 395. 

Professors in colleges before the Civil 
War, 33. 



Progress, passion for, in Tucker's gen- 
eration, 2, 449. 

Progressive movement in theology, at- 
titude of churches toward, 90; cov- 
ered three fields, 91; in the field of 
theological inquiry, 92-94; in the 
field of historical criticism, 94-96; 
its humanistic impulse, 96-99. 

"Progressive Orthodoxy," 91, 142. 

Progressives, the, 422. 

Prohibition crusade, the, 13; attitude 
of society toward, 425. 

Provincialism in colleges, 257-59. 

Public-mindedness, 391. 

Public speaking, 414. 

Prudential Committee of American 
Board of Missions, 152-58. 

Puritanism, revival of, in anti-slavery 
conflict, 7-12; after the Civil War, 
12, 13. 

Putnam, Professor, 35. 

Quint, Rev. Dr. Alonzo H., 105, 209, 
301. 

Rainsford, William S., letter to Tucker, 

429, 430. 
Ranney, W. W., 183. 
Raymond, Rossiter W., 370. 
Religion, of Boston and New York, 

compared, 72; and science, so-called 

conflict of, 94; the projection of, 

into the conditions of modern life, 

97; academic, 262, 263. 
Religious controversy in nineteenth 

century, 5, 6. 
Religious cooperation, conditions not 

favorable to, after the Civil War, 63. 
Religious effect of the social revolution 

of the nineteenth century, 16. 
Religious movement of eighteenth 

century, 273, 274. 
Reparation, the question of, 434. 
Republican party, the formation of, 

11. 
Rich, Charles A., 312. 
Richardson, Professor Charles F., 347. 
Richardson, Dr. Cyrus, 301. 
Richardson, Judge James B., 301. 
Ripley, George and Dick, 22. 
Robertson, Frederick W., 58-62. 
Robinson, ex-Governor, 207. 
Robinson, Professor William C, 351. 
Rockwood, Mrs. George I., 396. 
Rogers, Charlotte, wife of Professor 

Tucker, 229. 
Rogers, John, 229. 



INDEX 



461 



Rollins, Governor, 380. 
Rollins Chapel, 313. 402. 
Roosevelt, Theodore, 422. 
Ropes, Joseph T., 104. 
Rowe, Sam, 26. 

Russell, Charles Theodore, 105. 
Russell, Thomas H., 104. 
Russell, Judge, 197, 199. 
Ryder, Professor, 124. 

Sabbatical year at Dartmouth, 406. 

Salem race-track, 387, 388. 

Sanborn, Professor, 35. 

San Francisco, 370. 

Sayward, Judge, 396. 

Schaff, Philip, 74. 

Scholarship, the corporate spirit a 
stimulus to, 255-57; need of an avo- 
cation in, 393. 

Schools, addresses of Tucker at, 372. 

Science and religion, so-called conflict 
of, 94. 

Scientific renaissance of nineteenth 
century, 4-7. 

"Second probation," 108, 109, 125, 
126, 128, 131. 

Sectarianism in colleges, 262, 263. 

Sedgwick, Ellery, 443, 446. 

Seelye, President Julius H., 105, 108, 
117, 203, 209. 

Self -education, 1. 

Sewall, Professor, 168. 

Sewall, Oliver D., 183. 

Shattuck, George O., 207- 

Shedd, William G. T., 74, 138. 

Sills, President, 363. 

Slavery issue, the, 7-12. 

Smith, President, 351. 

Smith, Edwin R., 183. 

Smith, Prof. Henry B., 74. 

Smith, Jeremiah, 288. 

Smith, Dr. William T., 395. 

Smyth, Professor Egbert C, 124; arti- 
cle in the "Review" by, 140, 141; 
specifications on which he was con- 
demned, 143; personal sketch of , 146; 
reply of, to letter of Dr. Eustis, 193; 
his argument, at trial, 199, 200; con- 
demned by Board of Visitors, 203; 
appeals to Supreme Court of Massa- 
chusetts, 205; reinstated, 208; com- 
plaint against, renewed, 211; case 
against, dismissed, 212, 213; the re- 
sult of the trial a personal triimiph 
for, 214, 215. 

Smj'th, Dr. Newman, 55; his reputa- 
tion, 106; controversy over, 104-16; 



at the First Church of New Haven, 
116, 117; refuses new chair offered 
by Trustees of Andover, 118, 119. 

Snow, Francis H., 54. 

Social Christianity, 16, 97. 

Social conscience, 424, 425. 

Social Economics at Andover, 172-77. 

Social justice, 17. 

Social order, the new, 14-17. 

Social progress, Tucker's views on, 
422-27. 

Social settlements, 17, 426. 

Socialism, the danger in, 16; commu- 
nistic, 17. 

Sociological studies, connection of 
Andover with, 172-77, 181-84. 

South End House. See Andover House. 

Spalding, C. W., 303. 

Spalding, Dr., 66 n. 

Stanley, Dean, 81. 

Starbuck, Professor C. C, 137. 

State, conception of, as power, 427- 
29. 

Stearns, Edward R., 183. 

Storrs, Richard S., 73. 

Stowe, Professor Calvin E., 57. 

Stowe, Harriet B., 57. 

Strain, physical and mental, 394. 

Streeter, Frank S., 301, 436. 

"Struggle for existence," 92, 93. 

Sullivan, Attorney-General, 288. 

Syndicate, the, 15. 

Tappan Wentworth Fund, the, 303. 

Taylor, Edward, 104. 

Taylor, Dr. John P., 124, 137. 

Taylor, Dr. William M., 73. 

Teague, Henry N., 313. 

Teimyson, Alfred, 254. 

Thackeray, W. M., 81. 

Thayer, General Sylvanus, 358. 

Thayer, Professor, 121-23. 

Thayer School, the, 351, 358, 359. 

Theological freedom, 217, 218. 

Theology, progressive movement in, 
90-99. See Progressive movement. 

Tibbetts, Mr., 316. 

Tilden, Samuel J., 79, 80. 

Torrey, Daniel T., 154. 

Toynbee Hall, 181. 

Travel, value of, 392, 393. 

Trust, the, 15. 

Trustees, Board of. See Andover The- 
ological Seminary, Andover Trial. 

Tuck, Amos, 320. 

Tuck, Edward, benefactions of, 319- 
21, 355-58. 



462 



INDEX 



Tucker, Robert, early ancestor of 
William J. Tucker, 20. 

Tucker, William ("Squire Tucker"), 
grandfather of William J. Tucker, 
20; his house at Norwich, 21; char- 
acter of, 21, 22. 

Tucker, William J., the character of 
his generation, 1; the fortune of his 
generation, 1-18; the purpose of his 
generation, 2; the heritage of his gen- 
eration, 7; his approach to his gener- 
ation, 19; his ancestry and early 
home at Norwich, 20-24; influence 
of grandfather and mother on, 24; 
taken into the household of Rev. 
W. R. Jewett, 24; journey of, to Ply- 
mouth, N.H., 24, 25; boyhood life 
of, at Plymouth, 27-30; his early 
schooling, 27; his early reading, 28, 
29; his preparation and examina- 
tions for college, 35; moral effect of 
the college freedom on, 36; and col- 
lege routine, 36, 37; precluded from 
taking great active part in Civil War, 
42; effect of illness upon, 42 n.; 
teaching in Columbus, Ohio, 45; his 
service in the United States Chris- 
tian Commission, 48-50; on the 
march from Atlanta to the sea, 50; 
changes from the law to the ministry, 
53, 54; at Andover Seminary, 55-58; 
his debt to Frederick W. Robertson, 
58-62; in service of American Home 
Missionary Society, 63; in the Frank- 
lin Street pastorate, Manchester, 
N.H., 64-71; influence of the pastor- 
ate on, 66, 67; on the need of clear, 
terse, and truthful speech in the 
ministry, 67; experiment of, in the 
constructive study of the Bible, 67- 
69; in the Madison Square pastorate, 
71-89; his first sermon in the new 
pastorate, 75, 76; finds responsive 
congregation, 76, 77; his pastoral 
lectures, 77, 78; personal associa- 
tions with men of public value, 78- 
83. 

Goes to Andover Theological Sem- 
inary, 86-89; report of meeting ac- 
cepting resignation from pastorate, 
88 n.; letter of, to Mr. Hardy on 
Newman Smyth, 112-14; letter of 
President Hyde to, 112 n.; his reason 
for urging acceptance of new chair 
on Smyth, 119; Bartlet Professor of 
Sacred Rhetoric, 124; delivers ser- 
mon at Fitchburg, Mass., 126-28; 



his Sunday engagements, 129, 130; 
on the modern orthodox view of 
Christ, 132; his conception of the 
person of Christ, 134, 135; proposal 
as candidate for presidency of Amer- 
ican Board of Missions, 158 n.; his 
work in the Lectureship on Pastoral 
Theology, 161, 169-72; his chair of 
Preaching, 162; his lectures on "The 
Making and Unmaking of the 
Preacher," 162, 163; lectures of, on 
the technique of preaching, 163-65; 
cooperates in preparation of hymn 
book, 166-69; gives courses in Social 
Economics, 173-76; his statement 
covering his subscription of the 
Andover Creed, 200-02; elected to 
Presidency of Dartmouth, 222; con- 
siderations for and against his ac- 
ceptance of the Presidency, 222-25, 
237; letter of, to Trustees of Dart- 
mouth, declining call to Presidency, 
225-28; domestic affairs of, 229-31; 
Phi Beta Kappa Oration of, 232, 
233; decides to accept Presidency of 
Dartmouth, 238; letter of Judge 
Bishop to, 238; editorial in "An- 
dover To%vnsman" on, 239 n.; letters 
of resignation from Andover and 
acceptance of Presidency to Dart- 
mouth, 240-44; his views as to loca- 
tion of theological schools, 246; his 
object, to give to Dartmouth its pos- 
sible institutional development, 268, 
269; lines on which he proposed to 
develop Dartmouth, 269-71; address 
of, at the grave of Wheelock, 278-80; 
address at inauguration of Dr. 
Nichols, 280-82; from his address on 
the Origin of the Dartmouth College 
Case, 283-85; address at Webster 
Centennial, 290-92; confined himself 
to administrative duties at Dart- 
mouth, 318; his reason for approving 
of athletics, 332-36; tries to gain 
access to the mind of the College, 
339, 340; chapel talks of, 340-49; 
tries to develop sense of the per- 
sonal, 341-43; his "Personal Power," 
343, 419; tries to develop sense of the 
human, 343, 344; his " Public-Mind- 
edness," 344, 418; tries to develop re- 
ligious sense, 344, 345; his Lowell 
lectures, 364-66; letter of Dr. Cabot 
on the preaching of, 366, 367; serves 
as preacher at Harvard University, 
367, 368; lectures at Yale, 368; lee- 



INDEX 



463 



tures of, on the Morse Foundation, 
368, 369; takes part in Plymouth 
Church celebration, 370; not inter- 
ested in the technical and conven- 
tional, 371; various addresses of, 
371, 372; his interest in State of New 
Hampshire, 377, 378; speech on 
presentation of battle-flags to Gov. 
Johnston of Alabama, 381-84; on 
committee connected with New 
England Breeders' Club affair, 386; 
his name mentioned in connection 
with the governorship of New Hamp- 
shire, 388; his position in regard 
to politics, 389, 390; on politics as 
a profession, 390, 391; on public- 
mindedness and citizenship, 391; on 
avocation and value of travel, 392, 
393; on play and work, 394, 395; at 
York Harbor, 396; breakdown in his 
health, 396, 397; his letter of resigna- 
tion, 397, 398; second letter of, agree- 
ing to partial service, 399, 400; at 
Nantucket, 400-02; fund bearing 
his name, 402; interest in academic 
productivity of Dartmouth, 403-05; 
interest in pension system, 405, 406; 
services of, in second year under 
temporary withdrawal of resigna- 
tion, 406; introductory statement of 
report of, 406, 407; communication 
of, to "The Dartmouth" on Presi- 
dent Nichols, 408, 409; speech of, 
at Alumni Dinner, 409-13. 

Satisfactions growing out of his 
retirement, 414-16; buys house on 
Occom Ridge, 415; his daughters and 
sister, 415 n.\ on the New Reserva- 
tion of Time, 417, 418; edits ad- 
dresses, 418, 419; monograph on 
" The Functionof the Church in Mod- 
ern Society," 419; at reunion of the 
"Boys of '61," 419; his attitude to- 
ward Mr. Roosevelt and the Progres- 
sives, 422; his views and articles on so- 
cial progress, 422-27; his views on the 
ethical element in the War, 427-29; 
his article, "The Ethical Challenge 
of the War," quoted, 428, 420; letters 
of Rainsford and Hough to, 429, 430; 
his article, "The Crux of the Peace 
Problem," 430, 431; his article "On 
the Control of Modern Civilization," 
431, 432; on the Pope's proposal for 
intervention, 432, 433; on the mind 
of Germany, 434; on the study of 
the German language, 434-38; his 



views on our participation in world 
affairs, 438-42; his book, "The New 
Reservation of Time," 443; on peace 
as the aim of the incoming gener- 
ation, 449-51. 

Union Theological Seminary, strong- 
hold of advanced Presbyterianism of 
New York, 73, 74, 87; its attempt to 
liberalize the doctrine of Scripture, 
99; freed from visitatorial control, 
119, 120; lectures by Tucker on the 
Morse Foundation at, 368, 369. 

Unions, labor, 15. 

Unitarian Club, addresses at, 131-34. 

Unitarianism, its relation to the An- 
dover movement, 131-35. 

United States Christian Commission, 
the, 48. 

United States Hotel, 24, 25, 198. 

United States Sanitary Commission, 
the, 48. 

Universities. See Colleges. 

Upton, Judge Samuel, letter of, 68. 

Vallandigham, C. L., arrest and banish- 
ment of, unwise, 45. 

Vermont and New Hampshire, struggle 
between, 373, 374. 

Visitorial system, the, 119, 216. 

Visitors, Board of. See Andover The- 
ological Seminary, Andover Trial. 

Vose, Rev. Dr. James G., 105. 

Waldron, Dr., 54. 

Walker, Rev. Dr. George Leon, 105, 209. 

Wallace, Rev. Cyrus W., 65. 

War, the spirit of, 449, 450. 

War, the, the moral issue in, 427-34. 

Ward, Benjamin, 26. 

Ward, Julius H., 365. 

Ward, Dr. William Hayes, 111. 

Wealth, the Gospel of, 178-80; and 
institutionalism in colleges, 263. 

Webster, Daniel, 8, 25; counsel in Dart- 
mouth College Case, 288, 289; cen- 
tennial of graduation of, 289; address 
of President Tucker at Centennial, 
290-92. 

Webster Centennial, the, 289. 

Webster Hall, 322. 

Wellman, Arthur H., 197, 199. 

Wellman, Rev. Dr. J. W., 104, 211. 

Wells, Professor David Collins, 230, 
317. 

Wells, Mrs. D. C, sister of President 
Tucker, 230, 415 n. 



738V 



Zki^ 



464 



INDEX 



Wentworth, Tappan, 303. 

Wheeler, Mrs. Leonard, 396. 

Wheelock, Dr. Eleazar, 268; his Indian 
School, 23, 272-76; his religious life, 
274; and Whitefield, 274, 275. 

Wheelock, John, son of Dr. Wheelock, 
appointed President of Dartmouth, 
283, 284; conflict of, with Trustees, 
285, 286; deposed, 287, 292, 293. 

"Wheelock Succession, The," 280-83. 

White, Sarah, Tucker's mother, 22. 

Whitefield, George, 274, 275. 

Wickham, Mayor, 77. 

Wilcox, Rev. Dr. William H., 104. 

Wilder, Charles T., fund given by, 304. 

Will, the, Professor Park's division of, 
56. 



Wilson, Woodrow, from address of, on 
academic communities, 252. 

Woodruff, Professor Frank E., 124. 

Woods, Robert A., 181, 231, 367, 448. 

Woodward, Judge, 287, 375. 

Work, change in attitude toward, after 
the Civil War, 15; and play, 394, 
395. 

Worship, public, 166-69, 171. 

Wright, Prof. George Frederick, 5, 136. 

Yale University, endowment of, 264; 

Tucker lectures at, 368. 
York Harbor, 396. 
Young, Professor Ira, 35. 

Zerviab, Aunt, 21. 



















^O 








c,'^'' .^^¥A^ U .^^ /^fe*"- V..'^'^ ^;c^Va\ 'e^ .A^ /I 





















•' '•^^%'^' 






-> ^^ -^^ • 



'oK 












4.^ C^ ' 

















>^ o""". <^^ ** .0^ ..^'•■. '^C 







